A few miles south of the town of Starobeshevo in eastern Ukraine, a group of men in uniform is slumped under a tree, reports GHN based on CNN.
They are dejected and exhausted, their eyes red with fatigue.
They do not want to be filmed but tell us of the horror they endured a day earlier. As medics with the Ukrainian army, they had transported the bodies of some 70 soldiers away from a combat zone and many more who were seriously wounded.
They scarcely raise their heads when a Ukrainian air force jet streaks across the sky, releasing its payload on a rebel-held area to the east. It's the only action by the air force that we've witnessed against a rebel force that's suddenly gone on the offensive across a wide area of eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warned Saturday that the crisis with Russia has worsened in recent days and is inching closer to a "full-scale war."
Border guard bases and checkpoints deserted
The drive north from the port city of Mariupol -- only a couple of miles from the Russian border -- offered no evidence of a Ukrainian presence. Bases of the border guard service are deserted, checkpoints on rural roads abandoned, sandbags strewn along the verge. In effect, Ukraine has forfeited control of perhaps as much as 200 miles of its eastern border.
The Ukrainians claim that Russian artillery fired from across the border is helping the rebels advance and that thousands of Russian troops are mixed in with the separatists. Moscow denies both claims.