Ukraine said yesterday it was redeploying troops in the east because of fears separatists will launch a new military offensive, despite Russia’s denials it has sent troops to reinforce the rebels.
A ceasefire agreed by the pro-Russian rebels and government forces more than two months ago is now all but dead, and Western fears of a return to all-out conflict are growing.
US General Philip Breedlove, Nato Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said the alliance had seen Russian troops and tanks entering Ukraine in the past few days, confirming reports by international observers.
“There is no question any more about Russia’s direct military involvement in Ukraine,” Breedlove said in Bulgaria.
A Russian Defence Ministry official, General-Major Igor Konashenkov, said in Moscow “there were and are no facts” behind such statements and Russia had given up paying attention to such accusations by Nato.
Nato has seen Russian troops and tanks entering Ukraine in the past few days
Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak left no doubt that Kiev was also no longer paying attention to Moscow’s denials of providing the rebels with direct military support in the worst diplomatic standoff with the West since the Cold War.
“We are repositioning our armed forces to respond to the actions of the rebel fighters,” Poltorak told a government meeting in Kiev. “I see my main task is to prepare for military action.”
He gave no details of the troop movements.
The September 5 ceasefire followed weeks of fierce fighting between government forces and separatists who rebelled in mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine against the rule of Kiev’s Western-looking government eight months ago. The truce has been violated daily, and increasingly since the rebels held what the West and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said were illegitimate leadership elections on November 2. The death toll has passed 4,000 since the truce was agreed, with Kiev accusing Moscow of sending more troops last week.
“Russia’s actions represent a clear decision by Moscow to reject the international principles that have shaped international security for over 25 years, the foundation for a Europe that is a whole free and at peace,” Breedlove said.
President Vladimir Putin has bit back by accusing the West of instigating the coup that ousted a Moscow-backed president in Kiev in February after months of street protests, and of trying to use the crisis to prevent Russia’s rise as a global power. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told US Secretary of State John Kerry by phone that the ceasefire deal must be upheld, rejecting accusations that Moscow is to blame for its collapse.
A Reuters reporter, however, saw unidentified military trucks in the centre of Donetsk yesterday, with soldiers in green uniform without insignia standing nearby. Russian soldiers spotted by local residents have often worn no insignia.