WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu “guaranteed” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday that no Russian troops are involved in the transport of humanitarian relief supplies to eastern Ukraine, a Pentagon spokesman said.

In their first telephone conversation since late April, Shoygu also assured Hagel that a Russian convoy of more than 250 trucks, portrayed by Moscow as a humanitarian relief effort, “was not to be used as a pretext to further intervene in Ukraine,” according to the spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby.