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G7 to impose new sanctions on Russia as Kiev warns of ‘world war’

“Yesterday, we arrested some NATO spies… they will be exchanged for our own prisoners. I don’t see any other way they will be freed,” Denis Pushilin, the head of the insurgents’ self-declared Donetsk Republic, told reporters Saturday.

Pushilin was speaking in front of the SBU security services building in rebel-held Slavyansk, where the OSCE team was being held.

German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said pro-Russian separatists arrested 13 mission members, including three members of the German army and an interpreter.

Washington called for the immediate release of the OSCE team and State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki insisted “there is a strong connection between Russia and these separatists,” carrying out such hostage-takings

Russian warplanes violated Ukraine’s airspace several times in the past 24 hours, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said Friday, without giving details.

The United States and the European Union have already targeted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle with visa and asset freezes and imposed sanctions on a key Russian bank.

The White House said that Moscow could “still choose a peaceful resolution to the crisis” by implementing a deal struck in Geneva last week to defuse the tension.

Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danylo Lubkivsky told reporters at the United Nations that his country would exercise restraint in its operations against pro-Russian separatists.

“The anti-terrorist operation is ongoing, but we are guided by one major idea: we would like to avoid any victims or casualties,” he said.

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Kiev announced that its forces were now seeking to “blockade” rebels inside Slavyansk, in a bid to prevent militant reinforcements from arriving and to spare civilian casualties.

An AFP journalist saw heavily armed troops setting up a checkpoint some 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the town of 110,000 people.

On Thursday, Ukrainian armoured vehicles and commandos had made a brief but dramatic incursion into Slavyansk, killing a 22-year-old insurgent.

But the rebels in Slavyansk were defiant Friday, vowing: “We will not surrender the town.”

Only 16 kilometres to the south, at an air base close to the city of Kramatorsk, a rocket-propelled grenade blew up a Ukrainian military helicopter sitting on the tarmac, officials in Kiev said.

The pilot escaped but was wounded.

Russia responded to Ukraine’s military offensive by ordering its troops massed on the border to launch new drills.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed Kiev’s offensive was part of a US plot to “seize” Ukraine for its own “geopolitical ambitions and not the interests of the Ukrainian people”.

In a sign of the increasingly desperate efforts to prevent the conflict spiralling out of control, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned: “There is not much time to end this madness.”

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