“This is a very unsafe game”, said Putin, according to The Guardian.
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An irate Putin accused Kiev of “practising terror” and warned that the deaths of the two Russian officers would have consequences.
A cease-fire agreed in February 2015 tempered fighting that has lasted more than two years and killed almost 10,000 people, according to the United Nations. “We obviously will not let such things slide by”.
“This is a very risky game. I ordered that all units in districts near the administrative border with the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and along the entire contact line in Donbas be put on alert”, Poroshenko said on his Twitter account on Thursday.
The allegations will fuel further tensions in the feud between Russian Federation and Ukraine, sparked when Moscow annexed Crimea from Kiev in March 2014 after Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted.
Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko drew parallels between the current situation involving Russian Federation and Ukraine and the lead-up to a 2008 war between Russian Federation and Georgia.
Observers say there has been a recent increase in Russian military activity in northern Crimea.
Relations between Russian Federation and Ukraine have reached a new low in the recent days following Russia’s statement on Wednesday (August 10) wherein Ukraine was accused of killing two of its men over an alleged clash on the Crimean border.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had found a group of infiltrators in Crimea, near the Ukrainian border.
At a meeting on Thursday of Poroshenko’s top intelligence and security officials, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Valeriy Kondratyuk briefed the group that Ukrainian agents observed a shootout “between servicemen from Russia’s armed forces and the border service of Russia’s FSB”.
“On the night of August 8, 2016, special operations forces from the Ukrainian Defence Ministry carried out two more attempts to make a breakthrough by sabotage-terrorist groups”, it said.
“The attempts to break through were accompanied by massive covering fire from the neighbouring state and from Ukrainian armoured vehicles”.
FSB said it had arrested several Ukrainians, allegedly responsible for organizing terrorist acts on the peninsula.
“This way, the Russian security services are trying to distract the local population and the global community from the criminal act of transforming the peninsula into an isolated military base”, according to a statement issued by Defense Ministry.
Since occupying Crimea, Russia has assembled a large military presence on the peninsular.
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Putin, speaking in Moscow on Wednesday, said that Kiev’s actions were “stupid” and “criminal” and that there was no point in holding planned talks on the peace process in eastern Ukraine as a result.
