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He did not provide specific evidence to back up his claims, and since Ukraine does not control long stretches of its border with Russia, it was not immediately clear how the military obtained such specific information.

Ukraine’s military also said Friday that it had killed up to 200 separatist fighters who they said were firing on the army around the Donetsk airport, a scene of some of the most intense fighting in the region. Lysenko said five soldiers were killed in the past 24 hours, up slightly from previous days.

Earlier in the week, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the Western alliance had noticed Russian troops moving closer to the Ukrainian border. A NATO military spokesman said Friday that the alliance was investigating the new Ukrainian reports. Foreign Minister John Baird of Canada tweeted his concerns Wednesday about reports of ‘‘Russia’s provocative actions,’’ calling them ‘‘proof that the Kremlin seeks to hamper the peace process in Ukraine.’’

A spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry criticized Baird and denied NATO’s reports in a briefing in Moscow on Friday, just hours before Lysenko charged that the Russian military was not only approaching but had actually crossed the border into rebel-held regions.

Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over responsibility for stoking a conflict between government troops and pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine that has raged for seven months and claimed more than 4,000 lives.

Those accusations have escalated in the wake of elections in the rebel-held areas of eastern Ukraine last weekend.

President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine said such elections jeopardized ‘‘the entire peace process.’’ Earlier this week, he ordered the deployment of army units to parts of the east and south of the country to prevent a potential offensive. He also called for scrapping a law granting special status to rebel-held areas of eastern Ukraine.

The Kremlin on Friday appeared to soften its rhetoric toward Kyiv regarding the election. Yuri Ushakov, the top foreign policy aide to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, said that Russia ‘‘respects’’ the will of voters in the rebel election, rather than using the word ‘‘recognition,’’ apparently because it has weightier legal implications.

Ushakov also refrained from calling the rebel-held territory ‘‘Novorossiya,’’ or New Russia, the separatists’ term for the area, instead calling it the Donetsk and Luhansk region.

He said that although Putin and President Obama have not made specific plans to meet at upcoming summits in Beijing and Australia, ‘‘the leaders have a good chance of talking to each other on the go, on their feet.’’