Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

A woman and her daughter live in the shelled of the Donetsk city hospital. Source: AFP

After a week in which Kiev said several unmarked armoured convoys of troops crossed the Russian border to reinforce rebels in the east, Mr Poroshenko toughened his rhetoric, telling the German daily Bild: “I am not afraid of a war with Russian troops.”

He added, in an interview to be published today: “We are prepared for a scenario of total war ... We don’t want war, we want peace and we are fighting for European values. But Russia does not respect any agreement.”

Mr Poroshenko’s claim came as Russian President Vladimir Putin left the G20 summit in Brisbane early after being confronted by a number of other leaders over the Ukraine crisis.

US President Barack Obama said on Sunday that Russia would remain isolated by the international community if Mr Putin failed to end Russian backing for the separatist rebels in Ukraine.

The most acrimonious exchange was with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as the leaders gathered for the traditional summit photo.

“I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I have only one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine,” Mr Harper told the Russian president, according to an account provided by the Canadian leader.

It has since emerged that the rest of the conversation was even blunter. “Putin replied, I’m not in Ukraine, to which Harper said, ‘That’s why I don’t want to have a meeting with you, you’ll just lie to me’,” a source at the summit told The Times of London.

Before he left Brisbane, Mr Putin told reporters that his talks on Ukraine with other G20 leaders were “very frank, very substantive and, I think, helpful.”

Mr Poroshenko said Kiev was now better prepared to face a rumoured rebel offensive. “Our army is now in a better state than it was five months ago and we are being supported by the entire world,” he told the paper.

“More than anything we want peace, but we must at the moment face up to the worst-case scenario.”

Seven months of fighting in eastern Ukraine has claimed the lives of more than 4,100 people, according to UN figures.

The latest clashes come amid a nominal ceasefire that has halted fighting along much of the frontline but not stopped regular artillery bombardments at strategic hot spots.

But with an apparent growing military build-up, the UN said it feared “a return to total war”.

On a visit to Bratislava on Sunday, Poroshenko told reporters the conflict would “end within two weeks” if the peace plan signed in Minsk in September was implemented.