Ukrainian president protests to Putin about tanks

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Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko protested to President Vladimir Putin on Thursday that tanks had been allowed to cross the Russian border into his country, a spokesman for the Ukrainian president said.

Spokesman Svyatoslav Tsegolko wrote on his Facebook page that Poroshenko had described the situation as "unacceptable."

This comes after Poroshenko and Putin discussed moves to end violence in east Ukraine by telephone, the Kremlin said.

"The president of Ukraine informed Putin about his plan to resolve (problems) in the southeast of Ukraine," Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass news agency. He gave no details.

Putin and Poroshenko met in France last week but they are not known to have spoken since Poroshenko was sown in as president on Saturday.

Also on Thursday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying that Russia plans to submit a draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council to put pressure on Ukraine to implement a "road map" to peace.

The road map was drawn up by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in May to give impetus to a deal reached in Geneva by the European Union, Russia, Ukraine and the United States to try to end the crisis in Ukraine.

Lavrov accused Kiev of not abiding by the Geneva agreement or the road map and blamed it for the failure to end violence in east Ukraine, where the Ukrainian army is battling pro-Russian separatists who control several towns and cities.

Russia has already submitted several draft resolutions on Ukraine to the Security Council which have been rejected.

"We have assigned our (U.N.) envoy in New York, Vitaly Churkin, to submit a draft resolution to the Security Council on the situation in Ukraine," the state-run Itar-Tass news agency quoted Lavrov as saying.

"That is because the lack of any progress in the efforts to end the violence ... is causing growing concern," he said.

Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russia of fuelling the uprising in east Ukraine, but Moscow denies this. The separatist rebels have called on Russia to send in peacekeepers but Lavrov said their deployment was not warranted by the situation.

On an another note, nine coal miners were missing on Thursday after a methane gas explosion in a pit in the east Ukrainian region of Donetsk, the emergency services said on Thursday.

The blast occurred at 3.39 am (0039 GMT) at a depth of 300 meters, they said in a statement.

The mine is in the small town of Kirovske, 90 km (56 miles) north of the regional capital Donetsk and 40 km (25 miles) from Slaviansk, in the Donbass mining region where pro-Russian separatists have taken up arms in some areas.

Russia's Gazprom:

Russian natural gas exporter Gazprom will halt supplies to Ukraine if it fails to pay off $1.95 billion of its gas debts by Monday, chief executive Alexei Miller said on Thursday.

"If Ukraine pays for no (gas) volumes at all, it means that ... gas shipments to Ukraine will be zero," he said in televised comments.

Miller also said Bulgaria had not notified Gazprom of any suspension of work on construction of the South Stream pipeline to deliver Russian gas to Europe and that the project was still under way.

REUTERS