KIEV, August 11. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has ordered the country’s Foreign Ministry to initiate phone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, US Vice President Joe Biden and European Council President Donald Tusk, the president’s press service said.

"The Foreign Ministry has to organize phone conversations with the leadership of Germany and France in a trilateral Normandy format and invite for the conversation US Vice President Joe Biden, European Council President Donald Tusk and initiate a conversation with Russian President Putin," the statement said.

Poroshenko has also ordered Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin to ask the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine to increase the number of monitors on the border with Crimea and also instruct the chief of Ukraine’s mission to the United Nations to hold consultations in the UN Security Council.

Earlier in the day Poroshenko ordered all units on the border with Crimea and on the contact line in Donbass to be at the highest level of combat readiness.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Wednesday it has foiled terrorist attacks in Crimea plotted by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry’s main intelligence directorate. A group of saboteurs was spotted in the small hours of August 7 near the city of Armyansk, close to the border with Ukraine. Two Russian servicemen were killed in an operation to detain the terrorists. The aborted terror attempts were designed to target Crimea’s critical infrastructure and life support facilities, the FSB said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has described as silly and criminal the Ukrainian special services’ attempt at an act of sabotage in Crimea. The real purpose was to distract attention from Ukraine’s internal problems, he added.