A convoy of hundreds of white-painted trucks is waiting on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine, parked at Kamensk-Shakhtinsky in the Rostov Region while Moscow urges Kiev for permission to bring what they claim is an aid convoy to ethnic Russian areas in eastern Ukraine.

Kiev insists that the trucks – more than 200 of them – must be inspected before they are allowed to proceed to Donetsk and Luhansk, to ensure they’re not carrying military aid to Moscow-backed separatists.  Russia dismissed those fears as absurd.  But without independent inspections, Kiev says the trucks’ manifests and destinations are nebulous.

Something more ominous happened outside the convoy.  Reporters for the Guardian newspaper say they witnesses several military vehicles break from the white-painted convoy, and head towards rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine under cover of darkness.  It passed over a dirt road through a hole cut in a barbed wire fence that demarcates the border.  If this account is true, it confirms the accusations from Kiev and the west, that the Russians are directly supplying the rebels.