NATO says over 1,000 Russian troops in Ukraine AU COPY
APUkrainian soldiers arrive to reinforce their positions near the village of Sakhanka, eastern Ukraine.
Ambassadors to NATO will hold an emergency meeting in Brussels today to discuss reports that Russia had sent troops into Ukraine, a diplomatic source said.
The meeting of the 28 ambassadors will take place at NATO headquartersand will be followed by talks with an envoy to the alliance from Ukraine, the source said.

A senior NATO official said that "well over a thousand" Russian troops were operating inside Ukraine. Photo: AFP
"Russian forces have entered Ukraine," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said, cancelling a foreign trip and calling an emergency meeting of the country's security council.
"Today the president's place is in Kiev."
Poroshenko urged his citizens to resist giving into panic.
"Destabilisation of the situation and panic, this is as much of a weapon of the enemy as tanks," Poroshenko told the security council.
Two columns of tanks and military vehicles rolled into southeastern Ukraine from Russia after Grad missiles were fired at a border post and Ukraine's overmatched border guards fled, a top Ukrainian official said.
"The hand from behind is becoming more and more overt now," Brig. Gen. Nico Tak said at NATO's military headquarters, adding that Russia's ultimate aim was to stave off defeat for the separatists and turn eastern Ukraine into a "frozen conflict" that would destabilise the country indefinitely.
"An invasion is an invasion is an invasion," tweeted the Lithuanian ambassador to the UN, Raimonda Murmokaite.
A senior NATO official said that "well over a thousand" Russian troops were operating inside Ukraine.
"They support separatists, fighting with them and fighting amongst them," the official said on condition of anonymity, adding that the supply of arms by Russia had increased in both "volume and quality".
Armed Ukrainian servicemen comb the area after being shot at by pro-Russian militants at their check-point near the small city of Dzerzhynsk, in the Donetsk region. Photo: AFP
The official, who was speaking to reporters ahead of a NATO summit next week in Britain, said the situation was made even more worrying because the key route between Donetsk and Novoazovsk, on the Sea of Azov close to the Russian border, had been cut off by pro-Kremlin forces.
"The supply line is cut" for the Ukrainian army, he said.
The official warned that the latest events in Ukraine "have made clear that the security paradigm in Europe has fundamentally changed" in the face of a "very aggressive Russia".
He said the past weeks have seen a "real upsurge in Russia's activity" in the flashpoint region, including the supply of weapons, ammunition, special forces training, intelligence and logistical support.
"All this has been systematically denied, adding confusion," he said.
The reports by NATO come a week before an alliance summit in Cardiff, where possible action against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine will top the agenda.
Ukraine said its forces had captured a group of Russian paratroopers who had crossed into Ukrainian territory on a "special mission" - but Moscow said they had ended up there by mistake. Photo: REUTERSValentyn Ogirenko
Ukraine's ambassador to the European Union on Thursday called for "large scale" military assistance from the West as reports emerged that Russian troops had helped open a new front in southeastern Ukraine.
EU leaders will discuss the developments at a summit on Saturday that is primarily tasked with filling top EU jobs.
Immediately preceding the summit, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will meet European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels, as well as EU President Herman Van Rompuy.