Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak claims that Russian military servicemen are fighting against Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine, although it is hard to identify them, as they bear no insignia or other identification signs.

"After the summer campaign, when we captured soldiers from the Russian armed forces, when we seized their hardware in which there were packing lists, technical certificates and [other] documents clearly indicating what military base it belongs to and where it is located and where this serviceman was born, now, as a rule, Russian military hardware and personnel entering Ukrainian territory are absolutely depersonalized," Poltorak said at a news briefing in Kyiv on Saturday.

"Those whom we capture have a DPR military ID in their left pocket and a Russian passport in the right one," Poltorak said, suggesting that this is done to mislead the international public and make it believe that there are no Russian troops in the Ukrainian territory.

Poltorak also said in response to a question from a journalist that he personally was ready "to provide assistance in acquiring Ukrainian citizenship" to foreigners who "have come to us and are defending our land."

Meanwhile, Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Viktor Muzhenko said recently that Ukrainian government forces were not fighting regular units of the Russian armed forces, although he said he possessed facts of involvement of individual Russian servicemen on the militia side.

"We have facts of involvement of Russian military servicemen, Russian citizens, in the fighting on the side of illegal armed units. We are not engaged in military actions with regular units of the Russian army," Muzhenko said at a meeting with military attaches of foreign countries accredited in Ukraine in Kyiv on Thursday.

Muzhenko claimed also that the Ukrainian military have "enough forces and resources to deal a final and even fatal blow to the illegal armed units."

A number of high-ranking Russian officials have repeatedly denied allegations of involvement of Russian military servicemen in the conflict in Donbas over the past several months. In particular, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a recent press conference in Moscow that these allegations were baseless. "I say every time: if you allege this so confidently, show the facts. But nobody can present facts, or they don't want to, which I don't know," Lavrov said.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov yet again denied allegations by Ukrainian officials that Russian troops were fighting among the militia in a Friday statement.