Putin dismissed his long-time ally and chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, on Friday in a surprise change. he replaced Ivanov, who worked on operations in Crimea and Ukraine, with his deputy.
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Ukraine has called the accusations false and says they look like a pretext for Russian Federation to escalate hostilities. “These numbers may reflect some very bad intentions and this is the last thing we would like to happen”.
Russian Federation said the deaths of servicemen in Crimea would carry “consequences” and Ukraine put its troops on “high alert”, warning that Vladimir Putin is seeking to reignite the conflict in the disputed territories.
The announcement comes two days after President Vladimir Putin promised to take counter-measures after what he said were clashes between Russian forces and Ukrainian saboteurs in northern Crimea.
And when it does come, the war will likely claim the lives of up to 60,000 Russians and 15,000 Ukrainians, he said.
The strong language used by Putin and other Russian officials, particularly Putin’s refusal to discuss the implementation of the peace accord with Poroshenko, has raised fears of a possible escalation of hostilities.
The Russian Army’s Red Star newspaper in January quoted Colonel-General Alexander Galkin as saying the exercise would check combat readiness and test how air, sea, and land forces collaborated together.
Ukraine denies sending any saboteurs into Crimea.
“These fantasies pursue one goal: a pretext for more military threats against Ukraine”, he said, adding Ukraine “resolutely” condemned terrorism.
Whatever the truth of the incident, analysts say, far more telling is how both sides have reacted.
A USA intelligence official called the absence of observers at the Russian exercises “a worrisome development that we hope is just an oversight”.
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But Baunov at the Carnegie Centre in Moscow said Kiev could try to drag the fate of Crimea back to the heart of the debate on the Ukraine crisis as Western focus centres exclusively on resolving the conflict in the eastern Donbass region. “The Berlin Wall was initiated in August 1961, the invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred in August 1968, and the Moscow coup took place in August 1991”. “While the Kremlin would favor some progress toward the implementation of the Minsk Protocols (which would lock in Russia’s influence over Ukraine in perpetuity, while costing Kiev’s leadership greatly at home), Moscow is also content with what is a relatively favorable situation”.
