No sign of Russia pullback, say US, NATO and Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine — The United States and NATO joined Ukraine on Wednesday saying there was no sign of Russian troops withdrawing, after military movements in occupied Crimea fuelled reports that the crisis could be abating.
President Volodymyr Zelensky watched Ukrainian soldiers training with new Western-supplied anti-tank weapons near Rivne, west of the capital Kyiv.
He also visited the frontline city of Mariupol to mark what he had declared Ukraine's "Day of Unity", wearing a military-style olive green coat.
"We are not afraid of anyone, of any enemies," Zelensky said on a day that Western intelligence had warned Moscow could choose to invade Ukraine. "We will defend ourselves."
The rhetoric and demonstration of Ukrainian firepower contrasted with images on Russian state media that were said to show Moscow's forces bringing an end to a major exercise in Crimea.
But Zelensky said there was no evidence of Russians pulling back.
"We are seeing small rotations. I would not call these rotations the withdrawal of forces by Russia," he said in televised comments, adding: "We see no change."
In Rivne, missiles pounded practice targets, while in Kyiv hundreds of civilians marched in a stadium with an enormous national banner.
Russia's huge build-up of troops, missiles and warships around Ukraine has been billed as Europe's worst security risk since the Cold War.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, who hosted a meeting of alliance defence ministers in Brussels, also dismissed suggestions that the threat on Ukraine's border had diminished.
"Moscow has made it clear that it is prepared to contest the fundamental principles that have underpinned our security for decades and to do so by using force," he said.
"I regret to say that this is the new normal in Europe."
'Invasion force ready'
On the reported Russian troop movements, he said: "So far we do not see any sign of de-escalation on the ground; no withdrawals of troops or equipment.
"Russia maintains a massive invasion force ready to attack with high-end capabilities from Crimea to Belarus."
US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday also warned that no significant withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukraine border had been observed.
"The risk of a further military aggression by Russia against Ukraine remains high," according to a statement issued by the German chancellery following a phone call between Scholz and Biden.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded Ukraine be forbidden from pursuing its ambition to join NATO and wants to redraw the security map of eastern Europe, rolling back Western influence.
But, backed by a threat of crippling US and EU economic sanctions, Western leaders are pushing for a negotiated settlement, and Moscow has signalled it will start to pull forces back.
In the latest such move, on Wednesday the Russian defence ministry said military drills in Crimea — a Ukrainian region that Moscow annexed in 2014 — had ended and that troops were returning to their garrisons.
While Washington has demanded verifiable evidence of de-escalation, Biden has nevertheless vowed to push for a diplomatic solution.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed this, telling reporters: "It is positive that the US president is also noting his readiness to start serious negotiations."
US slams invasion 'pretext'
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said that three US Navy aircraft were intercepted by Russian planes in an "unprofessional" manner over the Mediterranean Sea last weekend.
The US State Department said Russia was attempting to create a pretext for invading with unsupported claims of "genocide" and mass graves in Ukraine's eastern Donbass region, which is controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.
"Over the past several weeks, we've also seen Russian officials and Russian media plant numerous stories in the press, any one of which could be elevated to serve as a pretext for an invasion," State Department Spokesman Ned Price said.
EU leaders, already gathered in Brussels for a summit with their African counterparts, are now to hold impromptu crisis talks on Russia and Ukraine on Thursday.
A UN Security Council meeting on Thursday is also set to discuss the crisis.
On Tuesday, Ukraine said the websites of the country's defence ministry and armed forces as well as private banks had been hit by a cyberattack of the kind that US intelligence fears would precede a Russian attack.
"It cannot be excluded that the aggressor is resorting to dirty tricks," Ukraine's communications watchdog said, in reference to Russia.
Peskov denied that Moscow had any role in the cyber assault.
"We do not know anything. As expected, Ukraine continues blaming Russia for everything," he said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday secured Turkey's crucial backing for Ukraine's NATO aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington's decision to deliver the controversial weapons — banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine — dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which entered its 500th day Saturday.
Zelensky has been travelling across Europe trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine's allies had hoped. — AFP
Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles is "a grave mistake", Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov says Wednesday.
"The White House's decision to send long-range missiles to Ukrainians is a grave mistake. The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," he says in a statement. — AFP
President Vladimir Putin says Sunday that Russian forces had made gains in their Ukraine offensive including in Avdiivka, a symbolic industrial hub.
"Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast," he says in an interview on Russian television, an extract of which was posted on social media on Sunday. "This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhia and Avdiivka." — AFP
The regional governor says debris from a drone destroyed over the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, fell on homes and killed three people, including a young child.
The air defense system "shot down an aircraft-type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) approaching the city", says Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that the falling debris destroyed several homes.
"Most importantly, three people were killed, one of them a small child," he writes on the Telegram messaging app, accompanied by pictures of a house reduced to a pile of rubble behind red and white police tape. — AFP
Ukraine's air force says on Tuesday that it had destroyed 27 of 36 Russian attack drones overnight in the south of the country.
Ukrainian forces downed 27 "Shahed-136/131" drones in the southern Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, the air force said on the messaging platform Telegram.
In all, Moscow had launched 36 of the Iranian-made drones from the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, it says. — AFP
The Kremlin claims on Friday Russian forces never targeted civilian infrastructure after Ukraine blamed Moscow for a missile attack that killed over 50 people in the eastern village of Groza.
"We repeat that the Russian military does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in his daily briefing. — AFP
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