UKRAINIAN interior ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said today that nine troops were killed in overnight fighting in the streets of the town of Ilovaisk, just east of the rebel stronghold Donetsk. 

Mr Gerashchenko claimed that government troops now control half of the town but admitted that rebels were still offering fierce resistance after more than a day of fighting.

The Kiev government’s war on the country’s Russian speakers has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced 300,000.

And it is draining the potential of the economy by the day, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk admitted yesterday.

Attacks by pro-Russian separatists on the infrastructure of the industrial east — mines, power stations, railways and bridges — were intended to strangle the economy, he claimed.

“Russia is aware that rebuilding the Donbass will cost not millions but billions of hryvnia,” he said, alleging that the attacks had been deliberately orchestrated by Russia.