If true, the events – which the FSB said involved at least two armed clashes on the border between Crimea and Ukraine – would be the most serious escalation on the contested peninsula since Moscow annexed it from Ukraine in 2014.
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Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have been escalating as Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday accused Kiev of plotting terrorist attacks in Crimea and vowed to take additional measures to ensure the safety of infrastructure and citizens there.
The Federal Security Service, known under its Russian acronym FSB, said in Wednesday’s statement that its officer was killed over the weekend near Armyansk within a few kilometers (miles) of the de-facto border between Crimea and Ukraine when FSB officers engaged in a gun battle with a group of “saboteurs” from Ukraine.
Last week, the Ukrainian State Border Service said that Russian Federation was building up troops levels along the contact line separating Crimea and Ukraine’s southern Kherson region.
“A pretense of an anti-terrorism operation staged by Russian Federation is more plausible than an actual Ukrainian attack on Crimea”, commentator Oleg Kashin wrote Thursday on Slon.ru. “We obviously will not let such things slide by”, Putin said.
“This is a very risky game”.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko dismissed the Russian claims, calling them “fantasy” and a “provocation”.
Russia’s FSB security service said the alleged infiltration was aimed at destabilizing Crimea ahead of Russia-wide parliamentary elections next month, Reuters reports.
Kondratiuk reported the incident at a meeting with law-enforcement agencies and the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine on Thursday, a posting on the Ukrainian president’s website reads.
Meanwhile, Irina Gerashchenko, the first deputy speaker of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada and Kiev’s representative in the Contact Group’s humanitarian subgroup, has called Panov “another hostage who was kidnapped”, adding that Ukraine will seek his release. Moscow refused to recognize Ukraine’s interim authorities after Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president, Viktor Yanukovych, was driving from power by massive protests, but later recognized Poroshenko.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s ambassador to the European Union, added in a Facebook post Thursday: “This is not a casus belli yet, but Russian Federation is actively accumulating stories for casus belli”.
Ukraine denied involvement in any attacks and National Security and Defence Council head Oleksandr Turchynov in an e-mailed statement called the accusation an example of Russia’s “hybrid war”.
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Putin said a mooted meeting with Poroshenko and mediators German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande at next month’s G20 summit in China was now “senseless”.
