Nato has observed a significant withdrawal of Russian forces from inside Ukraine, but many Russian troops remain stationed nearby, an alliance military spokesman said yesterday.

“There has been a significant pullback of Russian conventional forces from inside Ukraine, but many thousands are still deployed in the vicinity of the border,” Lieutenant-Colonel Jay Janzen said in an e-mailed response to a request from Reuters for comment.

“Some Russian troops remain inside Ukraine. It is difficult to determine the number, as pro-Russian separatists control several border crossings and troops are routinely moving back and forth across the border. Further, Russian special forces are operating in Ukraine, and they are difficult to detect,” he said.

On September 4, a Nato military officer said Russia had several thousand combat troops and hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles inside Ukraine and around 20,000 troops close to the Ukrainian border.

Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen appears at the 69th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, yesterday. Photo: Reuters

As recently as a week ago, Nato said it believed Russia still had around 1,000 soldiers inside Ukraine despite some cuts in troop numbers since a ceasefire began on September 5.

Janzen said there appeared to be a reduction in incidents, including artillery fire, between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists.

“Nato welcomes these positive signs, and encourages all parties to continue to work towards a peaceful solution to this crisis,” he said, while still expressing Nato’s concern about the large numbers of Russian forces deployed close to the eastern Ukraine border.

Meanwhile, Russia will increase its Black Sea fleet with more than 80 new warships by 2020 and will complete a second naval base for the fleet near the city of Novorossiysk by 2016, its commander said late on Tuesday. In comments made to President Vladimir Putin as he visited the port city, Vice Admiral Alexander Vitko said a second Black Sea base was needed in addition to the main base on the Crimea peninsula annexed from Ukraine because of Nato expansion.

“Eighty ships and other vessels are expected to arrive (in Novorossiysk) before 2020. The Black Sea Fleet will have 206 ships and vessels by 2020,” Vitko told Putin.

“Nato ships are constantly present in the Black Sea and it plans to establish a naval base in the Black Sea,” he added.

Nato has regularly conducted naval exercises in the Black Sea, especially since Russia annexed Crimea, populated mainly by ethnic Russians, in March partly from fear that Ukraine’s new pro-Western authorities might try to join the Atlantic alliance.

A Nato official told Reuters in Brussels there were no alliance plans to build a Black Sea base but said it already had access to the resources of member states in the region.

“Our Black Sea allies have ports that we use from time to time but (there are) no plans to build a ‘Nato’ base as suggested,” the official said.

Three Nato members have a Black Sea coastline – Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.

The former Soviet republic of Georgia, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, has sought membership in the past but like Ukraine is very unlikely to be admitted any time soon due to Moscow’s fierce opposition to Nato’s further eastern expansion. During Nato exercises in western Ukraine earlier this month, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu promised to boost the number of troops in Crimea.