Russian fury over Charles' Hitler remark escalates as Britain accused of avoiding 'giving explanation' after Putin's men kill FOURTEEN in bloodiest Ukraine clash yet
Russia today again hit out at Britain over Prince Charles' likening of Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler.
Moscow expressed anger that London failed to give what it deemed a proper account of the significance of the heir to the throne's controversial comments.
The row refused to die as the Russian embassy in London criticised senior Foreign Office official Sian MacLeod who 'avoided giving explanations regarding this matter, saying that it is a case of nothing but media reports about a private conversation. All of this cannot but cause regret.'
Russia a day earlier had labelled the prince's comments as 'unacceptable, outrageous and low'.
The British diplomat told deputy Russian ambassador Alexander Kramarenko that she was not prepared to discuss Prince Charles's private conversations, before going on to criticise Moscow's actions in Ukraine.
'It was not a meeting of minds,' said a British source. 'We were on quite different pages.'
Britain used the meeting to urge the Russians to avoid destabilising Ukraine as it goes to the polls in a presidential election on Sunday.
But today Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu warned bluntly about Ukraine: 'After the forceful overthrow of the current president and with the active participation of external forces, the country has practically slid into a civil war.'
He accused the West of provoking 'an artificially created tinderbox' in Europe.
'The results of such intervention is a long-term destabilisation,' he told a security conference in Moscow.
His comments came after reports that at least 14 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and dozens more were wounded when rebels stormed their checkpoint in east Ukraine.
The attack was the deadliest yet in the conflict and saw three armoured vehicles destroyed and a series of other lorries and vans burned out.
A group of rebels in the town of Horlivka claimed responsibility for the attack near the village of Blahodatne, near the town of Volnovakha, Donetsk.
Meanwhile, as the diplomatic crisis escalated:
The Daily Mail revealed earlier this week the prince's extraordinary remarks as he met Second World War veterans and their families on his Canada visit.
And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler,' he told Marianne Ferguson, a museum volunteer who fled to Canada with her Jewish family when she was 13 and lost relatives in the Holocaust.
His remarks were seen as a reference to Putin's seizure of Crimea – the first annexation by a major power in Europe since the end of the Second World War in 1945.
Russia is now accused of sending undercover military forces into the Black Sea and other areas of eastern Ukraine with large ethnic Russian populations, using the pretext of protecting the Russian minority to take over more Ukrainian territory.
Yesterday Sian MacLeod, a Foreign Office director covering Eastern Europe, met Russian deputy ambassador Alexander Kramarenko at his request to discuss Charles's attack.
The Whitehall source said: 'The Russians were not happy and said they wanted to know what was going on. It is fair to say they were surprised by our blanket refusal to engage with the subject of the private conversations of the heir to the throne.
'Instead we said we would rather talk about a country one part of which they have annexed and another part of which they are trying to destabilise.'
Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich questioned whether Charles was fit to be king after his broadside comparing Putin and Hitler.
'If these words were really said, then undoubtedly they are not worthy of a future British monarch,' he said. 'We have requested an official explanation from British authorities over the statements.
'We view the use of the Western Press by members of the British Royal Family to spread the propaganda campaign against Russia on a pressing issue – that is, the situation in Ukraine – as unacceptable, outrageous and low.'
Another senior diplomatic official in Moscow, Maria Zakharova, said sarcastically: 'Prince Charles and Prince Harry have a special kind of relations with Nazism, I must say.'
That was apparently a reference to the sympathies of some members of the Windsor family with Hitler in the 1930s and Harry's appearance at a fancy dress party in a German uniform.
Meanwhile, the Russian embassy in London denounced the 'outrageous remarks made by Prince Charles in Canada'.
Russian officials pointed out that the Soviets lost 26million defeating the Nazis, with Churchill acknowledging it was the Russians 'who tore the guts out of the German army'.
A commentary in newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets said Charles was considered by the British to be 'a clearly defined eccentric' who talked to trees and once dismissed senior Chinese leaders as 'awful old waxworks'.
Privately, Charles has expressed his frustration that his trip has been dominated by a remark that was not, to his mind, a political statement but an expression of sympathy.
'The prince isn't angry per se, just very, very frustrated that something which was in no way a political pronouncement on his behalf has overshadowed everything the tour was trying to achieve,' said a royal source.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'People and governments across the world strongly condemn Russia's actions in Ukraine including the illegal annexation of Crimea, and the provoking of instability on the territory of a sovereign neighbour.'
Armed pro-Russian separatists ambushed a convoy of Ukrainian self-defence fighters today, two days before a presidential election.
A number of Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in the attack, which took place near the eastern city of Donetsk, military sources said.
'They (the separatists) are using automatic weapons, snipers and grenade launchers against the battalion,' Semen Semenchenko, the commander of a pro-Ukrainian militia group called the Donbass region battalion, said on his Facebook page.
Yuri Bereza, the commander of pro-Ukrainian self-defence forces in a nearby region who had headed to the scene, told Reuters by telephone: 'The fighting is still going on, we are evacuating the wounded.' He gave no figure for the wounded.
Hours later, Russia accused the West of triggering the Ukrainian crisis by its 'megalomania,' as fighting continued in Ukraine's east between pro-Russia insurgents and government forces two days before a presidential election.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov urged the West to reach a settlement based on mutual interests.
'If we sincerely want to help the Ukrainian people overcome this crisis, it's necessary to abandon the notorious zero-sum games, stop encouraging xenophobic and neo-Nazi sentiments and get rid of dangerous megalomania,' Lavrov said in a speech at a security conference in Moscow organized by the Russian Defense Ministry.
Speaking at the same conference, the head of the General Staff of the Russian military, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, blamed the West for encouraging massive protests that chased Ukraine's pro-Russian president from power in February.
It comes a day after at least 14 Ukrainian servicemen were killed in a firefight with rebel gunmen south of Donetsk, an industrial hub where the separatists have proclaimed a 'people's republic' and have vowed to disrupt Sunday's presidential election.
In the deadliest clash yet in the conflict in Ukraine, three armoured vehicles were destroyed and a series of other lorries and vans burned out.
The destruction of armoured vehicles shows that the rebels have access to heavy weaponry and are not lightly-armed freelance operators. It is likely to raise fears that they have been armed by Moscow.
A group of rebels in the town of Horlivka claimed responsibility for the attack near the village of Blahodatne, near the town of Volnovakha, Donetsk.
They produced an array of weapons they said they had seized from the soldiers, in what is the deadliest raid in weeks of fighting in the region.
But a Ukrainian commander said shortly after the attack: 'The war has started.'
'We destroyed a checkpoint of the fascist Ukrainian army deployed on the land of the Donetsk Republic,' said the commander, who wore a balaclava and identified himself by his nom de guerre, 'Bes' - Russian for 'demon.'
Meanwhile, Russia's top general said today that Moscow would retaliate against increased NATO activity near its border as tensions with the western alliance over Ukraine escalate.
Since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region, NATO has moved to reassure its nervous eastern European allies. Ships and planes have been temporarily deployed to their countries and military exercises in the region stepped up.
'NATO's military groupings in the Baltic states, Poland and Romania are being built up, as well as the military presence of the bloc in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Sea,' General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of general staff of the Russian armed forces, told a defence conference in Moscow.
'The intensity, the operational and combat readiness of the alliance's troops is being increased near the Russian border. In these circumstances ... we have to take retaliatory measures.'