Pro-Russian separatists search for ammunition at the site of the crash of the Il-76 Ukrainian army transport plane in Luhansk, June 14, 2014. -Reuters

 

Dpa/Kiev

All 49 people on board a Ukrainian military aircraft were killed Saturday when separatists shot it down near Luhansk, the Ukrainian prosecutor's office said.

It said nine crew members and 40 soldiers on board the Ilyushin-76 were confirmed dead and an investigation had been launched.

The air force transport plane was approaching an airport in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine with "military personnel, machinery, equipment and supplies" when it came under "anti-aircraft and heavy machine gun fire," the military said.

Meanwhile, NATO released satellite images and videos that appeared to back krainian and US assertions that Russian tanks had crossed into Ukraine, media reports said.

NATO said the images showed Russian tank movements at the border with Ukraine, according to reports by The Wall Street Journal, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Voice of America.

The alliance said one satellite image showed eight tanks at a Russian military staging area June 6 near Rostov-on-Don, about 90 kilometres from the area on the border where the government in Kiev charged that Russian tanks had crossed into Ukrainian territory.

Satellite images taken Wednesday showed 10 tanks at the site with three loaded on transports, NATO said.

Images taken from YouTube videos later showed three unmarked T-64 tanks in Ukrainian territory. Unmarked tanks were also deployed in Crimea when Russia was taking over the peninsula from Ukraine in March.

On Thursday, Ukraine said at least three Russian tanks had crossed the border. Its assertions were backed a day later by the United States.

US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke by telephone Saturday with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and underscored the commitment of the United States and its partners in the Group of Seven to "raise the costs for Russia if it does not end the flow of weapons across the border and break with separatists," the State Department said.

Kerry also spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about the downing of the Ukrainian military plane and weapons going to the separatists, pressing Lavrov to work towards a ceasefire and political dialogue, the State Department said.

Eastern Ukraine has seen weeks of clashes between security forces of the central government in Kiev and pro-Russian separatists.

Representatives of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic would neither confirm nor deny the downing of the plane, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency said.

In other diplomatic efforts, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by telephone after the plane was brought down. The French presidency said Merkel and Hollande stressed the importance of a ceasefire and of creating conditions for a de-escalation, including

"avoiding the supply of combatants and weapons across the [Russian/Ukrainian] border and calling on the separatists to end their combat."

Russia and Ukraine, meanwhile, planned to resume talks late Saturday in Kiev on their gas pricing dispute, in a last ditch effort to resolve the row before a Monday morning deadline.

"We are ready to look for compromises, but it is not helpful to press on us," said Sergei Kupriyanov, spokesman for the state-controlled Russian gas company Gazprom.

"Our approaches to the solution of the accumulated problems have been repeatedly presented," he told Itar-Tass.

Russia has given cash-strapped Ukraine until 0600 GMT Monday to settle about 2 billion dollars in gas arrears or face the prospect of being delivered gas only after prepayment.

Energy ministers from Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in EU-mediated talks since April to try to settle their differences.

Ukraine is a key transit route for Russian energy flows to Western Europe and any halt in supplies would affect several EU member states dependent on Russian gas.

Russia has offered Ukraine a 100-dollar discount on its current gas price of 485 dollars per 1,000 cubic metres, saying that the discount would be guaranteed for one year. But Ukraine has insisted that it wants a gas price of 268 dollars set by contract.

Ukraine is also insisting on a new price-fixing mechanism that would be driven by market dynamics rather than government decisions in Moscow. Ukraine said Russia is unwilling to agree to this.