WRAPUP 1-NATO accuses Moscow of escalating Ukraine conflict
* Reports that Russian armoured vehicles entered east
Ukraine
* Russian government denies the reports
* Fighting forces pro-Moscow separatists into retreat
* Russian aid convoy stalls, many trucks partially empty
By Adrian Croft and Dmitry Madorsky
BRUSSELS/KAMENSK-SHAKHTINSKY, Russia, Aug 15 (Reuters) –
N ATO accused the Kremlin on Friday of escalating the conflict in
Ukraine, following reports that a small column of Russian
armoured vehicles had crossed overnight into an area of Ukraine
where pro-Moscow rebels are battling government forces.
The Russian government denied its troops had entered
Ukraine, but the media reports risked further inflaming tensions
between Moscow and the West, which have already imposed costly
economic restrictions on each other.
“If confirmed, they are further evidence that Russia is
doing the very opposite of what it’s saying. Russia has been
escalating the conflict, even as it calls for de-escalation,”
NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said.
At a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in
Brussels, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said he was
alarmed that Russian forces might have crossed the border.
“If there are any Russian military personnel or vehicles in
eastern Ukraine, they need to be withdrawn immediately or the
consequences could be very serious,” he told reporters.
Lithuania’s foreign minister also voiced concern.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper said on Friday that its
reporter had seen several armoured personnel carriers (APCs)
crossing the border with Ukraine. (bit.ly/1pbRpYg)
Ukrainian officials said that some armoured vehicles did
cross from Russian into Ukraine overnight, and that they were
investigating.
“These movements into Ukrainian territory take place
practically every day with the aim of provoking (the Ukrainian
side),” said Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky, a Ukrainian military
spokesman.
Despite the allegations of a fresh Russian military
incursion, the momentum on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine is
with the government forces.
They are winning territory from the separatists almost
daily, and in the main rebel strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk
are pounding the rebels with artillery strikes. Civilians have
also been wounded and killed.
The rebels meanwhile appear to be in a disorderly retreat
with three senior separatists removed from their post in the
past seven days. One of them was Igor Strelkov, a Moscow native
so feted among pro-Russian circles that T-shirts and mugs have
been printed in Russia with his image.
COLUMN OF TRUCKS
Western worries about Russian intervention in eastern
Ukraine had focused on a huge convoy that Moscow said was taking
humanitarian supplies to Ukrainian civilians.
Some European officials had said the convoy could be a cover
for a Russian military incursion, though Moscow dismissed that.
On Thursday, the convoy of some 280 trucks stopped in open
fields near the Russian town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, about 20 km
(12 miles) from the border in front of Izvaryne, which is under
the control of pro-Russian separatists.
There were no signs it would move on any time soon, with
negotiations dragging on between Russia, Ukraine, and the
International Committee of the Red Cross over granting the
convoy permission to enter Ukraine.
Reuters journalists who were allowed to look inside several
of the trucks on Friday said that, while some were filled with
pallets of bottled water and boxes of canned food, many were
partially empty.
One driver sitting in the cab of a parked truck said he was
carrying a cargo of tinned condensed milk. “All the pallets work
out at 7 tonnes and 920 kilograms,” he said. But he said the
truck could carry 20 tonnes.
Russia says it needs to get the supplies urgently to people
in the rebel-held cities of Luhansk and Donetsk. In Luhansk,
people have been without running water and electricity for
several days.
Asked about the amount of cargo in the trucks, a spokesman
for the Russian Emergencies Ministry, overseeing the convoy,
declined to comment.
Alexander Goltz, an independent Russian military analyst,
said it was normal practice for similar convoys to travel with
unused capacity so cargo could be transferred if any of the
trucks broke down.
“One other explanation is that they (Russian officials)
wanted to give the impression that the convoy was carrying far
more than it really is,” Goltz said.
SANCTIONS SQUEEZE
Apart from the trucks, a Reuters reporter with the convoy
saw a dozen APCs on the move not far from the convoy. Another
Reuters reporter saw two dozen APCs moving near the border with
Ukraine on Thursday night.
The United States and the European Union have imposed
sanctions on Russia over its role in east Ukraine and the
earlier annexation of Crimea, in the worst crisis in relations
between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.
The economic cost of the sanctions for both sides rose
sharply last week when the Kremlin, in response to EU sanctions,
halted imports of several food products from Western states.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday had talks in the
southern Russian resort of Sochi with the president of Finland,
one of the EU states hardest hit by the Russian embargo.
Finnish President Sauli Niinisto told Putin, through a
translator: “The catastrophe that happened in Ukraine is of
course reflecting on all of us, affecting us all, and it has
much broader implications than (just) local consequences.”
“I would therefore want to talk to you about the
opportunities to resolve the Ukraine (crisis), to stop the
negative string of events and contribute to stabilisation,
because all of that indeed affects all of us,” he said.
The Finnish president’s visit was unusual. He was the first
EU leader to be hosted on Russian soil by Putin since before
Russia’s annexation of Crimea earlier this year.
Most EU leaders have preferred to stay away to show their
displeasure over Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
(Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets in Kyiv, Maria
Tsvetkova and Alexander Winning in Moscow, and Alexei Anishchuk
in Sochi, Russia; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)