Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine, ordered his country’s armed forces onto combat alert yesterday (Thursday) amid a dramatic escalation of military tensions along the frontier with Russian Federation and Crimea.
Advertisement
Mr Medvedev raised the possibility of such a move after President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine earlier this week of trying to carry out terrorist attacks in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula that Russian Federation annexed in 2014.
On Wednesday, the FSB said the country had prevented a series of terrorist attacks in Crimea orchestrated by the Ukraine military intelligence service, in which two Russian servicemen were killed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin heads the Security Council meeting in Moscow’s Kremlin, Russia, Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016.
“Both leaders reiterated their strong support for political and diplomatic means to restore Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”, said the statement. “This is a very unsafe game”.
“Fantasies are only another pretext for the next military threats toward Ukraine”, he said.
“I ordered a high-level alert of all units in the region of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and along the entire contact line in Donbas”, Mr Poroshenko said, after meeting his national security council yesterday afternoon.
Earlier this week, footage appeared to show a fleet of Russian armoured trucks driving down a street on the peninsular in a large convoy on the northern Crimea border.
“I am afraid the severance of relations (between Russian Federation and Ukraine) could entail the introduction of visas among other things, which would be undesirable”, he said.
While local media and social media users have largely corroborated reports of a shootout at the Crimean border, independent accounts of the second border incident reported by the FSB were missing.
“Russia is hardly dissatisfied with the status quo”, Eurasia Group analysts including Alexander Kliment said in a note.
The 2015 peace agreement for eastern Ukraine signed in Minsk has helped reduce fighting in eastern Ukraine, but peaceful settlement has floundered. Kiev has rebuffed the charges and insisted that Russian Federation has no interest in observing the peace deal or preserving the status quo.
Russian Federation has also reportedly deployed a regiment of its advanced S-400 air defence missile system to Crimea.
“We reiterate our condemnation and non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea”.
“The temptation is high to try and use this occasion to solve the Ukrainian problem once and for all”, he said.
In an odd detail, Putin on Wednesday referred to Ukrainian authorities as “the people who seized power”.
Advertisement
He said he hoped the discussion would “help Russian Federation to understand they can not continue with this kind of behavior”. But after Poroshenko was elected in May 2014, Putin began to call the Ukrainian government “partners”.
