Russia has circulated a proposal for a United Nations Security Council resolution on Ukraine to demand a ceasefire between Kiev and pro-Russian insurgents, Moscow’s UN ambassador says.

Other elements of the measure give a greater role to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Vitaly Churkin told reporters.

Russia has asked the 14 other members of the Security Council to respond by 10am local time on Monday. However, it has yet to request that the panel meet over the matter.

Two previous attempts by Moscow – which is in a stand-off with the US and the European Union over the situation in Ukraine – to get the Council to agree to a text have proved unsuccessful.

The latest resolution will have the Council “voice an imperative demand addressed to the Ukrainian parties to the conflict to cease violence,” Churkin said, specifying this also included pro-Russian insurgents in the east of the former Soviet republic.

The Council “should express deep concern about the increasing number of civilian casualties as a result of intensified combat operations,” he said.

He also urged the Council to “call on the OSCE to facilitate settlement of the conflict by means of its special monitoring mission”.

Russia will allow OSCE monitors to be deployed at two border crossing points on its side of the border, he added.

“There must be a sustainable ceasefire and then measures on the border and contacts,” Churkin said. “We do not want to see a military escalation, we want de-escalation.”

Churkin accused Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko of using a June 20 peace plan as “a smokescreen for intensifying operations in the east of the country”.

His comments came as Ukraine’s military reported losing 23 servicemen in clashes across the separatist east.

The Defence Ministry said the toll included 19 soldiers who died in a hail of rockets fired from a truck-mounted Grad rocket launcher system – a type of weapon Kiev and the US say could only have been supplied to the rebels by Russia.