NO RUSSIAN weapons or troops have crossed into Ukraine in the past 11 months, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has reported.

Speaking at a press conference in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Thursday evening, OSCE chief observer Paul Picard said: “We have not seen any military equipment crossing the Donetsk or Gukovo checkpoints,” the two Russian border towns monitored by his team.

The Russian Donetsk shares the name of the Ukrainian region and its capital where, as in Lugansk to the north-east, anti-fascist forces are fighting troops and neonazi militias of the Kiev coup regime.

Kiev and its Nato and EU allies have repeatedly claimed that Russia has sent arms to anti-fascists and even invaded Ukraine with ground forces.

The former French army officer added that his observers had “never seen people crossing the border with weapons. The border guard and customs strictly watch over this.”

But he said that unarmed individuals in military clothing, some identifying themselves as “volunteers,” have been crossing the border on a daily basis.

He said that some were wearing the insignia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

“From September 1 through August 4, we have observed 21,309 of these types of people crossing the border, that’s 63 per day or 441 per week, of which 94 per cent are crossing the Donetsk checkpoint,” Mr Picard said.

That figure contrasted with the total of 2.9 million people crossing the border. “This flow is continuing, but it has become less,” he added.

The OSCE mission also saw 21 vehicles marked “cargo 200” or simply “200,” the chief observer said. Cargo 200 is a Russian military code for dead soldiers’ remains.

The pro-government Kyiv Post seized on this statement to claim that 21 Russian service people had been killed in Ukraine, but Mr Picard could not confirm the contents of the vehicles.

The mission also observed 115 aircraft flying over or near their checkpoints, but could not confirm that any of them crossed into neighbouring airspace.

The OSCE mission at Donetsk and Gukovo is set to continue at least until September 30. Its deployment has already been extended several times.