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A Ukrainian tank turret guards the entrance to the base of the Donbass Night Wolves motorbike club in Lugansk on March 17, 2015. Members of the club, formed in the then Soviet Union in the late 1980s, are now politically aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin. JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

There are no Russian troops in the Moscow-leaning Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, and there have never been, but there are Russian citizens who stand by local residents, the RIA news agency quoted the Kremlin as saying Saturday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was referring to repeated accusations to Moscow by Kiev and the West of its direct military involvement in the conflict between Ukrainian security forces and pro-Russian separatists in the region.

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