an hour agoRussia begins to soften, remove 10,000 troops from the Ukrainian border
Periskopi(4 years ago)
(4 years ago)Russia announced the withdrawal of more than 10,000 troops deployed in the border area with Ukraine. Moscow said this withdrawal marks the completion of military exercises near Ukraine, while the West has long speculated it was part of a plan to invade its former Soviet neighbour. Russian ministry [...]
The Russian Defence Ministry said the exercises for South Military Forces were held in a host of southern regions, including Rostovin, Krasnodar and Crime, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
But the exercises spread even wider, including in Stavropol, Astrakhan, the North Caucasus republics, and even in Russia's allied Armenia in the Caucasus.
Western countries have accused Russia of gathering more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine before a possible invasion in January.
According to Kiev, the number of Russian troops along Ukraine's borders has increased from about 930,000 troops in October to 104 000 currently.
Russia says it is free to move its forces into its territory as it sees fit and denies it is planning a large-scale attack.
It has submitted several demands to the West and has called on NATO not to accept new members and not to lay bases in the former Soviet republics.
Tensions peaked Wednesday, when President Vladimir Putin said Russia would militarily respond to what he called the aggressive “position of the West”.
But he turned down the volume the next day, saying he had seen a <x0-positive” reaction from the United States to Russia's security proposals and said there will be talks next month.
A senior American official has said Washington is “ready to engage in diplomacy since early January”, both in bilateral plan and “canal multiple”).
On Saturday, a German government official said Moscow and Berlin had agreed to a meeting in “beginning January”.
German leader Olaf Scholz and Putin agreed on a phone call Thursday to the meeting between Chancellor's diplomatic adviser, Jens Ploetner, and Kremlin leaders for relations with Ukraine, Dmitry Kozak.
In an interview Friday, a senior Ukrainian security official told AFP there was no danger of an imminent Russian invasion.
Kiev has been fighting pro-Russian separatists since 2014, when Moscow annexed Crime, a conflict that has so far claimed over 13,000 lives.
The West has long accused the Kremlin of providing direct military support to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. While Russia rejects these claims.
