NATO’s chief has dismissed as "nonsense" a claim by Russia’s Vladimir Putin that the Ukrainian army operates as a "foreign legion" for the alliance.

NATO's chief has dismissed as "nonsense" a claim by Russia's Vladimir Putin that the Ukrainian army operates as a "foreign legion" for the alliance.

“We often say: Ukrainian army, Ukrainian army. But who is really fighting [in eastern Ukraine]? There are official divisions of the armed forces but to a great extent there are so-called voluntary nationalist battalions. This is not even an army, it's a foreign legion. In this case it's a foreign NATO legion,” Putin said, speaking before university students in the city of St. Petersburg.

“[They are there] with the aim of geopolitically containing Russia, which is absolutely not in the national interests of the Ukrainian people,” he said.
Putin also accused Kiev of refusing to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine peacefully.

For his part, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg dismissed the Russian leader’s remarks and called on Moscow to stop providing military support to pro-Russian separatists.

"The statement that there is a Nato legion in Ukraine is nonsense," Stoltenberg told a meeting in Brussels aimed at discussing the Ukrainian crisis.

"There is no NATO legion, the foreign forces in Ukraine are Russian."

The NATO chief also urged Russia to stop providing backing to separatists, saying hundreds of pieces of advanced weaponry including tanks, heavy artillery and armored vehicles had crossed the border.