VIENNA, August 29. /ITAR-TASS/. The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) advance team arrived in Mariupol on Thursday night, the OSCE Monitoring Mission said in a report on Friday.

Observers will start reporting on the situation from August 29, the report said.

On August 28, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said the OSCE intended to send its monitors to Mariupol and Novoazovsk, the cities of Ukraine’s embattled south-eastern Donetsk region, for studying the situation.

Feltman said the UN could not confirm Kiev’s reports on the deployment of Russian troops to Ukraine. The latest developments mark a "dangerous escalation in the conflict", but that the international body has no way of verifying the latest "deeply alarming reports", he said.

Earlier, Russia’s Ambassador to the OSCE Andrei Kelin said Russian military and hardware were not engaged in Ukraine. “We were accused last week and the week before last of sending columns armored vehicles there. All the accusations were disproved, and this is done now as well. These accusations are senseless," Kelin said.