"We believe that this is Russian equipment. You cannot buy 100 tanks at a market in Donetsk or Luhansk," a Ukrainian army source told AFP in reference to the column.
Earlier on Wednesday Vladimir Putin said that Russia would do "everything to support the peace process" in Ukraine.
Speaking in Minsk after late-night face-to-face talks with Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine, Mr Putin denied any Russian involvement in the fighting and promised to "do everything" to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion.
"Frankly speaking, we cannot discuss any conditions for a ceasefire or possible agreements between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk. This is not our business; it is a domestic matter of Ukraine itself," he said in remarks carried on the Kremlin website.
"We can only support the creation of an environment of trust during this possible and, in my view, highly necessary negotiation process."
Fighting near Novoazovsk erupted on Monday in what Kiev called an attempt to open a "second front" in the previously peaceful southern part of Donetsk region.
Ukraine's national defence and security council said "terrorists and Russians" had captured a string of towns to the north of Novoazovsk by Wednesday evening, but claimed government forces had retaken the town itself.
But reporters on the scene, which lies on the Sea of Azov six miles from the Russian border, said they had seen no substantial Ukrainian forces in the area and reported tanks flying flags of the Donetsk People's Republic stationed at the western edge of Novoazovsk, which is itself six miles west of the Russian border.
Journalists also reported several armoured personnel carriers flying rebel flags that were manned by men in uniforms similar to those worn by Russian soldiers who overran Crimea prior to its annexation by Russia in March.
The advance puts the separatists just 25 miles from Mariupol, a key port town where Sergei Taruta, the pro-Kiev governor of Donetsk region, has been based since rebels took over Donetsk itself.
If they can take Mariupol, the separatists would be poised to strike along the coast creating a corridor to link up with Crimea, the province Russia annexed from Ukraine in March – a nightmare scenario for Kiev that had until recently seemed impossible.
The claims follow mounting evidence that regular Russian forces are now fighting openly alongside the separatists who have been locked in a civil conflict with Ukrainian government forces since April.
Ten Russian paratroopers who were captured inside Ukraine on Monday were paraded for a press conference in Kiev on Wednesday.
Mr Putin and other Russian officials have not denied that the soldiers crossed the border, but said they had done so "by mistake" during a routine patrol.
While Russian citizens serve openly in rebel ranks as "volunteers", the Kremlin has consistently denied that regular troops are involved in the fighting there.
However, doubt is growing amongst Russian press and public over official denials about involvement in Ukraine.
Reports of secret military funerals and mysteriously wounded servicemen prompted Vedomost, a liberal broadsheet, to publish an editorial demanding asking "Are we fighting or not?" on Wednesday.
Russian journalists investigating reports of mysterious funerals of servicemen said name plates had been removed from the graves of two paratroopers from Russia's 76th airborne division, Leonid Kichatkin and Alexander Osipov, who were buried in a cemetery in the unit's home town of Pskov on Monday.
The suspicion that Russian forces are fighting an undeclared war across the border has drawn comparison on social media with the beginning of the first Chechen War in 1994, when Boris Yeltsin denied sending a column of tanks into Grozny.
Meanwhile, the battlefield setbacks have exposed growing tensions over the war effort within the Ukrainian forces, with one prominent pro-Kiev commander accusing the government of lying about abandoning his men in a battle.
Semyon Semenchenko, the commander of the Donbass Battalion, a pro-Kiev volunteer militia, said he and his men had been "deceived" by the Ukrainian high command and called for a picket of the defence ministry in Kiev to demand a relief column to save troops surrounded by rebels near Donetsk.
Ukrainian forces and separatists have been locked in a see-saw struggle for Illovaisk, about 20 miles east of the rebel stronghold on Donetsk, since members of Mr Semenchenko's battalion entered it on August 18.
Mr Semenchenko, who is recovering elsewhere in Ukraine from wounds sustained during the battle, said promised support had never arrived and his men were now encircled with no way of evacuating their wounded.
"We can wait no more. We have been deceived," Semenchenko wrote on Facebook on Wednesday as he urged protesters to descend on the defence ministry in Kiev.
It may, however, already be too late. Rebel spokesmen said they had finally retaken Ilovaisk on Tuesday.
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1qyJYeg
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