Ukraine's interior minister said on Saturday that pro-Kremlin gunmen had opened fire on police stations in two heavily Russified eastern cities and blamed the attacks on Moscow's "aggression".

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said militants armed with Russian-issued machine guns had opened fired on police stations in the Donetsk region towns of Kramatorsk and Krasnyi Lyman. He did not report any casualties and blamed the attacks on "aggression by the Russian Federation".