MOSCOW (AFP) - Ten people were killed in a head-on collision in Russia not far from the Ukraine border on Wednesday when a minibus drove into a truck, police said.

The crash in the Belgorod region - about 40km from the border of eastern Ukraine's Kharkiv region - saw the minibus swerve into oncoming traffic and hit a large semi-trailer truck, the police in the Belgorod region said in a statement.

Ten people were killed, including the minibus driver, and six were injured, a spokesman for the police also told Russian agencies.

A police source told RIA-Novosti that the minibus was travelling to the Lugansk region in eastern Ukraine, part of which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists, and that the passengers were of Ukrainian nationality.