The burned-out remains of dozens of tanks and armored vehicles in fields near the village of Horbatenko bear witness to the ferocity of a battle that turned the tide of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Most of the tanks were used by the government forces who were routed in August near Horbatenko, 40 km southeast of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk — a defeat so demoralizing that Kiev agreed on a cease-fire with pro-Russian separatists just days later.

But among the debris are the blackened carcasses of what military experts have identified as two Russian army tanks, supporting statements by Kiev and the West that the rebels were backed by troops and equipment sent by Moscow.

The rebels had been on the brink of defeat until late August, when the Ukrainian government says they received an injection of soldiers and weapons from Russia.

Reuters showed photographs of the two tanks to four independent military experts, who said they were of a type used exclusively by the Russian Army.

At least one, they agreed, was a T-72BM — a Russian-made modification of a well known Soviet tank. This version of the tank is not known to have been exported.

"The presence of this variant in Ukraine . . . strongly supports the contention that Russia is supplying arms to separatist forces," wrote Joseph Dempsey, a military analyst for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, in late August when a tank like that was discovered on grainy footage of a rebel convoy.

Such remarks clearly undermine Russian denials of direct involvement in the conflict in Ukraine as Kiev charts a westward political and economic course.

The four military experts said the second tank was either the same as the first or a slightly different model, a T-72B1. The Soviet-made T-72B1, Dempsey said, is not believed to be in active service in Ukraine, making it almost impossible that the separatists captured it in battle.

Ukraine's Security Council, which groups the country's top political, defense and security chiefs, said in June the separatists were using T-72 tanks that could not have been captured from the Ukrainian Army.

Kiev also said in late August that Russian forces had entered Ukraine and occupied Starobeshevo, 5 km from Horbatenko.

Ukrainian soldiers caught in the battles say they were quickly overcome.

Alexei Koshelenko said he was captured on Aug. 24 or 25 near the town of Ilovaysk by Russians. "They said they were an airborne assault battalion from Kostroma," he said, referring to a city 300 km (200 miles) northeast of Moscow.

The accounts of residents of Horbatenko, a village of a few dozen inhabitants which overlooks the fields that became the battlefield, also challenge Russia's denials of direct intervention.

Valentina Ivanovna, 75, said she was slightly wounded by shrapnel when fighting became fierce in late August.

"We saw an armored convoy coming down here," she said. "They had white circles on the armor."

Neither the rebels nor the Ukrainian forces have white circles as their permanent recognized emblem. But another local resident said passing soldiers who identified themselves as Russian had told her the circles identified equipment used by Russians.

A destroyed Soviet-made BMP-2 armored personnel carrier a few hundred meters away also bore a white circle on its broken turret.

At the end of August, Ukraine accused Russian troops of crossing the border. To support the accusations, it released videotaped interviews with Russian paratroopers captured by Ukrainian forces in a village 15 km from Horbatenko. They said they served in the 98th division based in the town of Ivanovo in central Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he believed they had lost their way and crossed the unmarked segment of the border unintentionally. They were later sent back to Russia.

Anti-tank missiles fired near where the tanks were destroyed also appear to have originated in Russia because various used parts of Kornet anti-tank guided missiles were left there.

Reuters showed three military experts photographs of the missile parts, and two of them said Ukraine does not have anti-tank guided missiles of this type.

Trenches near the tanks also provided what appeared to be more evidence of foreign troops: numerous empty boxes of ready-to-eat meals that are used by the Russian Army and are not available for sale.