NATO member Poland will train Ukrainian military instructors as it has better facilities than those of its non-allied eastern neighbour, a Polish government spokesperson said Friday.

The announcement came on the heels of a meeting Friday in Warsaw between Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz and Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council chief Oleksandr Turchynov.

"Our bases and training facilities are better prepared and this is why they (the Ukrainian military instructors) will be trained in Poland," government spokeswoman Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska was quoted as saying by Polish commercial broadcaster TVN24.

Warsaw had said last week it would likely send a small contingent of troops to Ukraine to help train Kiev's military officers, echoing a similar deployment from Britain.

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that his country will send up to 75 soldiers to Ukraine on a "training mission" of about six months.

Cameron said they would not be sent to the conflict zone.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini was upbeat on Friday about the sputtering so-called Minsk II ceasefire between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces in the eastern regions of Ukraine bordering Russia.

"For sure the trend is a positive one, even if not perfect," she said in the Latvian capital Riga.

Both Ukrainian government forces and rebels claim to be withdrawing heavy weapons as called for in the truce.

But international monitors say they need greater access to their weapons inventories in order to verify the pullback.

Russian officials on Thursday dismissed claims by the United States and NATO that Moscow has sent "thousands" of troops to fight alongside pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

NATO deputy secretary-general Alexander Vershbow, speaking at a conference in the Latvian capital Riga on Thursday, said: "Russian leaders are less and less able to conceal the fact that Russian soldiers are fighting and dying in large numbers in Eastern Ukraine."

Swiss firm sells camouflage nets to sanctions-hit Russia
Geneva (AFP) March 8, 2015 –

Russia has acquired high-tech camouflage netting from Switzerland for a record 85 million euros, having placed the order before Bern imposed sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, reports said Sunday.

The netting is designed to escape detection by radar and infra-red captors.

The contract was signed in August 2014, before Bern decided to mirror EU sanctions against Russia, Swiss economic policy spokesman Fabian Maienfisch told the ATS news agency, confirming press reports.

Maienfisch declined to name either the civilian Russian buyer or the Swiss supplier.

The United States and the European Union applied a first round of sanctions against Moscow for its alleged military role in Ukraine in March 2014, followed by further penalties as the conflict has dragged on.

The Swiss supplier shipped a first batch of the camouflage netting worth 54 million Swiss francs (50.5 million euros, $54.7 million) in October 2014, and the rest two months later, the Sunday weeklies Le Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung reported.

It was the largest ever sale of Swiss military materiel to a Russian company.