NATO on Tuesday launched the first full drill of its new spearhead force in northern Poland, a structure designed to boost security on its eastern flank in the wake of Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Around 2,100 soldiers from nine NATO states grouped in the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) are taking part in the Noble Jump 2 exercises at the Zagan training range north-western Poland.

Ukraine urgently evacuated hundreds of residents Tuesday from the site of a series of fuel depot blasts near Kiev that set off a ferocious fire and left several people missing and at least one confirmed dead.

The defense ministry said it was also taking emergency measures to prevent the flames engulfing a nearby military airbase which has MiG-29 fighter jets and munitions on site.

At least seven Ukrainian servicemen died on Monday when their truck hit a mine planted by pro-Russian insurgents in the war-torn country's separatist east, a Kiev military spokesman told AFP.

"The roads in this area are mined by the enemy," military spokesman Yevgen Silkin said by telephone, adding that the incident occurred about 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the militants' de facto capital Donetsk.

Ukraine's defense minister on Monday accused pro-Russian rebels backed up by Moscow's forces of assembling a 40,000-strong army sufficient for a "mid-sized European state".

Stepan Poltorak's estimates fly in the face of Russia's denials that it either backs the separatist fighters or covertly sneaks troops across its southwestern border into the Ukrainian warzone.

Yet with barely a house left standing, Pisky remains a daily target of shelling, despite the latest truce with pro-Russian rebels, and Kiev's troops are digging down to survive.

Before the separatist conflict erupted in the east of the ex-Soviet country 14 months ago, Pisky was home to 2,000 people, many of whom worked in the coal mining center of Donetsk just three kilometers (two miles) away.

One Ukrainian coastguard was killed, five were injured and their commander remained unaccounted for Sunday after their cutter hit a mine planted in the bay of the strategic eastern port of Mariupol, officials said.

A spokesman for the interior ministry told Ukrainian television that one of the injured men had died in hospital. The other coastguards were still being treated but he declined to disclose the extent of their injuries.

The leaders of Germany and the United States hammered home a tough line on Russia Sunday at the start of a G7 summit dominated by crises in Ukraine and Greece.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel kicked off the day by treating U.S. President Barack Obama to some traditional Bavarian beer garden hospitality, with frothy ale, pretzels and oompah brass music played by locals in lederhosen.

It was once the summer destination for the brightest and best of Soviet children but it slipped into disuse and decay after the Socialist empire crumbled.

Now, however, showpiece holiday camp Artek in Crimea has reopened under Russian control after Moscow grabbed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine -- and it is once again aiming to shape a new generation.

EU leaders meeting in Brussels this month are set to extend sanctions on Russia over its involvement in the fighting in Ukraine until the end of 2015, diplomats told AFP on Friday.

The sanctions, which target economic sectors such as Russia's banks and oil industry, were imposed after the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in July 2014.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met his Dutch counterpart Bert Koenders on Friday to discuss catching and prosecuting those who shot down the Malaysia Airlines flight over Ukraine last year, Moscow said.

In Moscow, they also discussed "current issues of international importance, including the situation in the Middle East and North Africa... as well as resolving the Ukraine crisis", the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.