by Our Foreign Desk

UKRAINE’S president admitted yesterday that nearly 7,000 civilians have died in his government’s year-long civil war against anti-fascist forces.

Addressing a session of the Kiev parliament that was packed with regime troops, President Petro Poroshenko added that more than 1,000 people remain unaccounted for.

The figures are markedly higher than the last United Nations estimate of 6,100 civilian deaths.

Mr Poroshenko also reported that 1,657 Kiev loyalist militia fighters had been killed, blaming their deaths on “Russian aggression.”

He used the disastrous civil war and the crisis as a pretext to call for Nato membership for Ukraine.

“Given that the Russian threat is long-term and considering that the aggressive stance and policy of the Russian Federation poses a major threat to national security, the strategy aims to reach full compatibility in the security and defence sectors of Ukraine and Nato,” he claimed.

Mr Poroshenko came to power in controversial elections following the far-right coup against the legitimate government of President Viktor Yanukovych in February last year.

He and members of his government have made repeated claims of Russian troops invading Ukrainian territory with little or no evidence to back them up.

Moscow has consistently denied supplying anti-fascist forces with either equipment or manpower.

The Communist Party of Ukraine, which the Kiev regime is bent on banning, unveiled its anti-crisis programme yesterday with a call for peace, democracy and economic development.