From our newsroom. So the latest fighting -- in which, by Kyiv's and some others' accounts, pro-Russian efforts have been boosted considerably by direct Russian military participation -- has taken a significant toll on Ukrainian troops:
Kyiv officials say some 680 Ukrainian soldiers have been taken prisoner in recent days by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donetsk region.
Volodymyr Ruban, chairman of the Center for Prisoner Exchange, said on September 1 that "about 80 percent" of the soldiers were captured around Ilovaysk, east of Donetsk, where hundreds of Ukrainian troops were encircled by rebels and Russian troops.
Earlier, army spokesman Andriy Lysenko said soldiers made an "organized retreat" from the Luhansk airport amid an intensifying assault by "professional artillery gunmen of the Russian armed forces."
Based on reporting by AFP, ITAR-TASS, Reuters, and Interfax
ITAR-TASS describes the pro-Kyiv Donbas Battalion -- which comprises volunteers but has frequently spearheaded operations against pro-Russian forces -- as a "punitive battalion."
Prosecutors in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) put the commander of the Donbas punitive battalion, Semyon Semenchenko, on a police wanted list on
Monday.
The Donbas battalion, a voluntary armed unit, was set up in April this year to carry out a security operation against the supporters of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Two seamen are still said to be missing after the attack on those two Ukrainian coast-guard patrol boats in the Sea of Azov (see video of one, destroyed, below), Interfax reports. The Ukrainian border service now says eight other crew members were rescued after the attack, which took place yesterday afternoon.
h/t to "The Interpreter" for highlighting this video, from the Ukrainian border forces, of a burning Ukrainian coast-guard patrol boat. It is reportedly one of two boats destroyed by Russian or pro-Russian forces near Mariupol.
The Ukrainian Education Ministry announced that it had issued a call for school directors to help personally to ensure that displaced students from Crimea, which was annexed in March, and the conflict-torn regions of Luhansk and Donetsk can continue their studies, our Ukrainian Service's Crimean unit reports.
Via ITAR-TASS:
A next session of the Contact Group on Ukraine is fixed for September 5, said the vice premier of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic who took part in the Monday
meeting.
No details of the almost four-hour-long talks on Monday have been disclosed.
"We exchanged documents, the Ukrainian side presented its view, while we presented ours," Andrei Purgin told reporters, adding that concrete matters would be discussed on September 5.