WASHINGTON: ISIL has battled its way to the Golan Heights, putting its mad troops opposite battle-hardened Israel. NATO says satellite imagery prove Russian troops and materiel are flowing into Ukraine.

The president of Ukraine cancels a trip to Turkey and announces mandatory conscription. “Columns of heavy artillery, huge loads of arms and regular Russian servicemen came to the territory of Ukraine from Russia through the uncontrolled border area,” President Petro Poroshenko said at the start of an emergency meeting of Ukraine’s Nation Security and Defense Council in Kiev, according to his official website.

“Columns of heavy artillery, huge loads of arms and regular Russian servicemen came to the territory of Ukraine from Russia through the uncontrolled border area to save the terrorist gang,” Poroshenko says on the site. “The situation is certainly extremely difficult and nobody is going to simplify it. Still, it is controlled enough for us to refrain from panic, keep a cold mind, a common sense and a hard math.”

Ukraine TV released this video of what it says is a captured Russian tank.

http://youtu.be/eUQZN26jgSo

So They also posted this video purporting to show where Russian forces have opened a “new front in the war.

At the ceremony today celebrating the change of command at Special Operations Command, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel pointed to SOCOM’s operations as proof that the US is not being passive or withdrawing from its global responsibilities. “In Iraq, special operators on the ground are helping strengthen Iraqi security forces in their fight against ISIL. And in Eastern Europe, they are reinforcing NATO allies in light of Russian aggression in Ukraine,” Hagel noted.

President Obama stated categorically this afternoon that Russian forces are operating in Ukraine and the United Nations Security Council met in emergency session to discuss the crisis. Obama was careful to note the US will not take military action to help Ukraine but will increase “pressure” on Vlad Putin and his chums.

Obama will head next week to the annual NATO summit, this one being held in Britain. President Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande are expected to attend. In his remarks today, he noted that Ukraine is not part of NATO, adding that the US took its Article 5 responsibilities — collective defense — very seriously. So — message to Vlad — don’t even think of trying a Ukraine with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania or Poland.