An aide to the Ukrainian interior minister said 15 pro-Russian armed men were killed in clashes with government troops at a border crossing with Russia, the Associated Press reported.

Speaking on a television show late Thursday, June 5, Anton Herashchenko said Ukrainian border guards clashed earlier in the day with “armed men who came from Russia in trucks and an infantry vehicle and tried to cross the border at the village of Marynivka in eastern Ukraine.”

Herashenko said the attackers were supported by about a hundred of people who came from the Ukrainian side of the border.

Ukrainian government troops for weeks have been clashing with pro-Russian activists who dismiss the Kiev government as illegitimate.