DONETSK: International pressure on Russia was mounting yesterday over claims it is sending fresh military hardware into eastern Ukraine which could fuel a return to all-out conflict.
After Nato accused Russia of deploying tanks, troops and military hardware to the region, Ukraine said four of its soldiers had been killed in the past 24 hours and 18 wounded. There was fresh shelling in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk yesterday afternoon after a quiet morning with only occasional exchanges of fire, witnesses said.
Rebels said three people were injured in shelling in Donetsk on Wednesday. A senior Ukrainian security official claimed there were now thousands of Russian troops in the country. “According to our estimations, there are 8,000 Russian soldiers, maybe more, on our territory at the moment,” he said.
The skirmishes on the ground played out against a backdrop of rising Western concern over claims that Russia is dispatching reinforcements to the east of the former Soviet state.
Nato’s commander in Europe, US General Philip Breedlove, said on Wednesday that “columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defence systems and Russian combat troops” were entering Ukraine.
Later, Assistant Secretary-General Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that it was “deeply concerned” by a possible return to full-scale fighting.
The US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, charged that Russia “talks peace but it keeps fueling war” as Washington warned that the West could ramp up punishing sanctions against Moscow. But Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Alexander Pankin, described Nato claims of a Russian military buildup in east Ukraine as a “foray into propaganda”.
Pro-Russian separatists in east Ukraine have been fighting Ukrainian forces since April in a war which has claimed more than 4,000 lives. Moscow has repeatedly denied involvement but openly gives political backing to the self-declared separatist statelets in the east. AFP
