NATO sees Ukraine incursion risk after Russian troop buildup
Any incursion would be under the guise of a peacekeeping operation, says Poland’s foreign minister
Brussels/Kiev: NATO said there’s a risk of Russia sending troops into Ukraine under the pretext of a humanitarian or peacekeeping mission after President Vladimir Putin massed soldiers on his country’s western border.
We’re not going to guess what’s on Russia’s mind, but we can see what Russia is doing on the ground — and that is of great concern, Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said by e-mail on Wednesday. The latest Russian military buildup further escalates the situation and undermines efforts aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to the crisis. This is a dangerous situation.
Putin will likely aim at a fig leaf policy with an incursion under the guise of a peacekeeping operation, which would put Russian military boots on the ground, Amanda Paul, an analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels, said by e-mail. As other conflicts in the former Soviet Union have shown, once there is a Russian military presence it usually never leaves but gets larger and plays a very unproductive role.
Poland has reason to believe that the risk of an incursion is greater than a few days ago, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters in Warsaw on Wednesday. His foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, on Tuesday said that any incursion would be under the guise of a peacekeeping operation. Russia on Tuesday called for a humanitarian mission to eastern Ukraine, which is on the verge of a catastrophe, the foreign ministry in Moscow said on its website.
Ukraine considers Russia’s proposal of humanitarian aid to be cynical, blaming its neighbor for not allowing the military conflict to end, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the country’s defense and security council, told reporters in Kiev today.
On that basis, Rear Admiral John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday that Russia still has north of 10,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, and NATO deputy secretary general Alexander Vershbow said in a posting on Twitter that the number is about 20,000.
The humanitarian situation in Ukraine is steadily worsening, John Ging, director of humanitarian operations for the United Nations, said at an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday in New York. He said the fighting has killed at least 1,367 people — both civilians and combatants — and wounded 4,087 since mid-April.
Russian ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin told the Security Council that the situation in Ukraine, particularly in Donetsk and Luhansk, is disastrous and called on the international community to take emergency measures to improve the humanitarian measures in the area.
The pro-Russian separatist forces, which now number about 15,000, up from 300 when the conflict started, hold less than half the territory they did four weeks ago, Ukrainian defense minister Valeriy Geletey said in a BBC interview broadcast this week. BLOOMBERG
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