Ukraine president claims most Russian forces have left country
September 10, 2014: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, talks with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk in Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko, Pool)
Ukraine’s president has claimed that most Russian forces have left his country, in the latest conciliatory move aimed at stoking a peace campaign that began last week.
Reuters reported that Petro Poroshenko told a televised Cabinet meeting that “70 percent of Russian troops have been moved back across the border … This further strengthens our hope that the peace initiatives have good prospects.” He also said 700 Ukrainian prisoners had been freed from rebel captivity and expressed hope that another 500 would be freed by the end of the week.
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Estimates of the number of Russian troops that have taken part in the five-month old Ukrainian conflict have varied, with NATO estimating that at least 1,000 regular forces have been involved. For its part, Moscow has repeatedly denied training or equipping separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Poroshenko added the cease-fire was being tested by “terrorists” who attempted to provoke Ukrainian government forces. Ukraine claims that five servicemen have been killed during the cease-fire, while a civilian also died as a result of shelling in the port city of Mariupol.
As a result, Poroshenko said government forces were “regrouping” in an effort to defend Ukrainian territory from further attacks by separatists, who succeeded in breaking Kyiv’s encirclement of the key rebel cities of Donetsk and Luhansk with a fresh Russian-backed offensive just prior to last week’s cease-fire. Poroshenko also signed a law on Wednesday that gives Ukraine the power to impose sanctions against Russian companies and individuals deemed to be backing the insurgency.
Despite Poroshenko’s concerns, a Kremlin spokesman said the Ukraine president spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, and both pronounced themselves happy with the cease-fire “on the whole.”
In Moscow, Putin accused the West of using the crisis in Ukraine to reinvigorate NATO, warning that Moscow will ponder a response to the alliance’s decision to create a rapid-reaction “spearhead” force to protect Eastern Europe.
Addressing a Kremlin meeting on weapons modernization, Putin ominously warned the West against getting “hysterical” about Moscow’s re-arming efforts, in view of U.S. missile defense plans and other decisions he said have challenged Russia’s security.
“We have warned many times that we would have to take corresponding countermeasures to ensure our security,” Putin said, adding that he would now take personal charge of the government commission overseeing military industries. “I would like to underline that we only take retaliatory steps.”
Putin claimed that some in the West would like to pull Russia into a new arms race, but “we will not enter such race, it’s absolutely excluded.”
Putin’s comments came as the European Union was mulling a new wave of sanctions against Russia intended to persuade it to honor its part of a cease-fire agreement signed last week. A decision is expected later this week, as European leaders monitor the course of the cease-fire.
Meanwhile, Sky News reported that the World Health Organization has claimed that Ukraine faces a possible health emergency due to dwindling medical supplies, with the agency’s representative in Kyiv warning of a possible polio outbreak.
“Ukraine has no vaccines … they don’t have any vaccines in their storage,” Dorit Nitzan said. “Even before the crisis began they had low coverage.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.