As soon as Russian Federation forced the last Ukrainian troops based in Crimea to leave in 2014, Moscow set up fortified border crossings and sent new weapons to the peninsula – from cutting-edge fighter jets to the newest missile systems. Putin claimed that Kiev was “practicing terror”, and vowed to “not let such things slide by”.
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Ukraine’s security service has raised its terrorist threat level to the highest around Crimea and the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, where pro-Russian rebels have been fighting government troops for more than two years.
“A pretense of an anti-terrorism operation staged by Russia is more plausible than an actual Ukrainian attack on Crimea”, prominent Russian journalist Oleg Kashin wrote Thursday on Slon.ru.
“If it is happened in reality, where are the proofs?” The Europeans are notably skeptical of Russia’s claims that Ukraine tried to slip saboteurs into Crimea for terrorist attacks.
Ukrainian Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko, meanwhile, expressed concern about some 40,000 Russian troops he said were amassed near the border, saying “these numbers might reflect some very bad intentions”.
The US State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau said Washington wanted to see a de-escalation of tensions.
Kiev was accused by Putin of playing a risky game and he reveals that there is no point in holding a peace talk on the troubled region.
Kiev has staunchly denied the accusations laid out by the FSB and instead accused Moscow of staging a provocation.
In a statement, Ukraine’s presidency said Poroshenko met security officials and Foreign Ministry leaders, giving instructions to “enhance the combat readiness of the Armed Forces, National Guard, Border Service and Security Service of Ukraine”.
Amid the growing accusations, insults, and aggressive rhetoric from Moscow and Kiev, Poroshenko instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to arrange a phone conversation with Putin to discuss the mounting tensions. Two Russian servicemen were killed while preventing the attempt. “This was to ensure that certain special forces… so there would be no infiltration”, she said to Dozhd, an independent TV station.
The global community has tried to tamp down the rising tensions between Moscow and Kiev over fears that it could kill off a stalled peace process for eastern Ukraine signed in the Belarussian capital Minsk in February 2015.
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The official Russian account lays out the first as follows: It began late Saturday, when FSB officers discovered a group of saboteurs just on the Crimean side of the land border with Ukraine.
