Elite Russian paratroopers captured in Ukraine can't read maps or GPS, 'accidentally crossed border'

Elite Russian paratroopers captured in Ukraine can't read maps or GPS, 'accidentally crossed border' (Telegraph).

On August 25, joint task force of the Ukrainian armed forces and the Security Service of Ukraine detained near the settlement Zerkalny of the Donetsk region ten soldiers of the regiment 331 of Svir Airborne Division 98 of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (military unit 71211).

Ten Russian paratroopers who were captured in Ukraine on Monday crossed the border "accidentally" during a routine frontier patrol, Russia's Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday.

Ukraine's Security Service, the SBU, said on Monday that the men were captured near the village of Dzerkalne, about 25 miles southeast of the rebels' besieged stronghold, the city of Donetsk.

The village is 13 miles north of the nearest section of the Russian border. In its first public admission that regular Russian forces had crossed into Ukraine, a defence ministry official said the troops had made a "mistake" because of the poorly marked border.

"These servicemen really did take part in a patrol of a section of the Russian-Ukrainian border, crossing it likely by mistake at an unequipped and unmarked point, as far as we are aware they offered no resistance to the Ukrainian armed forces when arrested," a Ministry of Defence source told Russia's state-owned RIA Novosti news agency.

Russia has previously vigorously denied that its troops have crossed into Ukraine, despite repeated accusations from the Ukrainian and Western governments that it is providing men and material to the pro-Russian rebels fighting in the area.

The admission comes a day after the Ukrainian military said it repelled a cross-border attack involving ten tanks, two infantry fighting vehicles and two military trucks near the Sea of Azov. Ukraine described the attack, which Moscow denied knowledge of, as an attempt to open a "second front" in a southern part of Donetsk region previously relatively undisturbed by fighting.

Meanwhile, Russian media published photographs of the fresh graves of two young men in Pskov, Russia, who were widely reported to have been paratroopers who died fighting in Ukraine. The names of the dead men and some of those who were captured match social networking pages of young soldiers with the same names. Read the full story here.