The ballots from Sunday's presidential election were still being counted when insurgents in the Donbas region seized the area's main airportand fought one of the fiercest battles to keep control over the city of Donetsk.Moscow has officially endorsed the Ukrainian election.But Ukrainian officials say Russia is sending forces across the border to fight alongside the separatists, and this needs to be addressed."Ukraine needs to organize its defense - but not just the protection of the Ukrainian-Russian border.We need to use all government resources, especially in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions," said Nikolai Litvin, from the Ukrainian Border Patrol.Local officials say some of the wounded fighters, hospitalized after this week's fighting in Donetsk, are Chechen nationals.Chechnya's pro-Russian leader Ramzan Kadyrov is denying claims he sent the fighters on Moscow's orders.But Washington-based political analyst Peter Eltsov is skeptical of this denial."If there are Chechens right now fighting together with the Russian separatists in Donetsk,that means just one thing: that they were sent by Kadyrov directly and they are some kind of Kadyrov's militia - Kadyrov's people," said Eltsov.Eltsov says Russian President Vladimir Putin most likely asked his ally Kadyrov to dispatch Chechen fighters to eastern Ukraine."It's an incredible hypocrisy.On the one hand, Russia supports separatism within Ukraine, and at the same time fights separatism within Russia, in the case of Chechnya.
