KIEV: Ukraine on Tuesday launched criminal trial of two captured Russian soldiers it claims will prove Moscow’s direct but covert involvement in the conflict in the war-torn former Soviet state. Kiev’s forces seized the two wounded men during a May gun battle that violated a ceasefire the warring sides had signed up to under stronger European pressure three months earlier. The military then controversially broadcast the pair’s alleged confessions to being active members of an elite Russian military intelligence unit performing a reconnaissance mission under Moscow’s orders in Ukraine’s eastern war zone. Russia insists the two -- Captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sergeant Aleksander Aleksandrov -- were “volunteers”: off-duty servicemen who joined pro-Kremlin militias fighting in Ukraine’s industrial heartland since early last year.