Ukraine claims Russian military forces in major rebel cities

Ukraine's defense minister has said that government forces are shifting their strategy in an effort to prevent further setbacks at the hands of pro-Russian separatist rebels.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Valeriy Heletey said Monday that Kiev's military were no longer attempting to roust the rebels from their bases in eastern Ukraine and would instead attempt to defend themselves from what he claimed was a 'full-scale invasion' by Russian troops.

'The operation to liberate the east of Ukraine from terrorists is over,' Mr. Heletey said in a Facebook post Monday, according to the Journal. 'We must urgently build our defense against Russia, which is trying not only to reinforce regions occupied earlier by terrorists, but to attack other Ukrainian regions.

'Unfortunately, in such a war, the losses will be numbered not in their hundreds, but in thousands, even tens of thousands,' the statement continued. 'We must refrain from panic and show that Ukrainians are not about to surrender.'

The latest deterioration of Ukraine's military situation comes as President Obama is due to depart Washington Tuesday afternoon for a one-day visit to Estonia before traveling to Wales for a NATO summit. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that NATO leaders will approve a special rapid response military unit that will be placed on permanent high alert in the event of any crisis.

Ukraine and NATO have repeatedly claimed that thousands of Russian regulars are inside Ukraine assisting the rebels, a charge that Moscow has denied.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko repeated the charge Monday when he ndisguised aggression has been launched against Ukraine from a neighboring state,' in a speech at a military academy in Kiev. 'This has changed the situation in the zone of conflict in a radical way,' Poroshenko added.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso breached confidentiality when he quoted President Vladimir Putin as saying Moscow could take over Kiev in two weeks if it wished. Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday that Putin's statement was 'quoted out of context and carried a completely different meaning.'

Several European publications earlier this week quoted Barroso saying that Putin had made the remark in a private conversation.

Ukrainian military spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko said Monday that Kiev's forces had withdrawn from the airport in Luhansk, one of two major rebel-held cities that had been surrounded just days ago. He also said that Ukrainian troops were taking up positions to prevent Russian forces from moving into the port city of Mariupol on Ukraine's southern coast, as well as to protect the retreat of troops from the town of Illoviask.

news3blog.blogspot.com contributed to this report. Click for more from The Wall Street Journal.