AlHijjah 19, 1435, October 13, 2014, SPA -- Military officials in Ukraine say there's been a reduction in the number of Russian soldiers at the heart of the fighting between government troops and separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, AP reported. Russian personnel who had been in field camps in Ukraine have been returning to their home bases inside Russia, Ukrainian security spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko said Monday. Moscow vehemently denies that it has troops in Ukraine or that it supports the separatist forces in Ukraine's largely Russian-speaking eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Lysenko described the reported withdrawal as a positive process, but said mercenary fighters were still entering Ukraine from southern Russia, where some Ukrainian border posts are controlled by rebels. A cease-fire declared early last month between Ukrainian forces and rebel fighters has been violated almost daily, although the overall scale of fighting has eased substantially since that time.
