Separatist leaders ask Russia for military force to repel Ukraine ‘aggression’

The Kremlin has said it has received an official request for military aid from the leaders of the two Russian-controlled territories in east Ukraine, setting the stage for Russia to send a large deployment of troops into the country imminently.

The separatist leaders asked Russia to "help repel the aggression of the Ukrainian armed forces in order to avoid civilian casualties and a humanitarian catastrophe in the Donbas", said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.

Vladimir Putin received parliamentary authorisation to deploy his forces to Ukraine on Tuesday but claimed he had not sent troops there yet. More than 60% of Russia's ground forces are deployed close to Ukraine's borders, threatening a potential all-out invasion that could capture the country's capital, Kyiv.

It was not immediately clear if the requests for military aid would trigger a larger Russian attack. But it appears that Russian forces are preparing to officially enter the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the coming hours, formally occupying the region for the first time since fighting begin in 2014.

"We are potentially close to some sort of action," the Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said on Thursday evening, adding: "Russian forces continue to assemble closer to the border." Kirby said that Putin "is going to have to answer to Russian moms and dads about their soldiers that aren't making it back home alive or making it back with injuries."

Asked if Russian forces were moving into other areas of Ukraine, Kirby said: "Not beyond that region that we have seen, but we can't confirm with any great specificity the numbers and what the formations are."

Ukraine had earlier declared a state of emergency, mobilised reserves and told nearly 3 million of its citizens to leave Russia, as the US warned that Vladimir Putin had assembled almost 100% of the forces needed to launch a large-scale invasion of the country.