Kiev announces week-long ceasefire in fight against separatists
WASHINGTON: Russia has re-deployed "significant" military forces near its border with Ukraine and stockpiled additional tanks and artillery at a southwestern site, a US official said on Friday.
Ukrainian officials have separately told EU and G7 teams in Kiev on Friday that they have evidence of 10 additional tanks and sealed trucks coming over the border close to Lugansk in the past 24 hours.
"We are watching the reports, we are endeavoring to establish the facts through our own means," a senior US administration official said, adding the United States independently obtained "information that additional tanks departed from a deployment site in southwest Russia yesterday (Thursday)."
"Separately we have information that Russia has re-deployed significant military to its border with Ukraine," the official said, adding it was believed more forces were due to arrive in coming weeks. Some of the troops were "within a handful of kilometers" of Ukrainian territory, "the closest they have been since the invasion of Crimea" earlier this year.
Moscow has since annexed the southern Ukrainian peninsula. The news came as the US Treasury Department blacklisted seven Ukraine separatists, saying their activities threaten the peace and sovereignty of the country.
Topping the list was Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, the rebel leader in the eastern separatist stronghold of Slavyansk whose group kidnapped observers from the European security body OSCE in May and continues to hold them.
The US is "confident" that Moscow last week sent tanks and rocket launchers from the deployment site in southwest Russia into eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian separatists are fighting to break away Kiev, the official said, asking not to be named.
Washington has information that "additional tanks... and artillery have been accumulated" at the same site, the official said, adding they were of the same type as materiel used by Ukrainian forces which are trying to quell the offensive.
The news came as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko released a sweeping peace plan for curbing the pro-Russian uprising and said a ceasefire would begin later on Friday, to give the rebels a chance to disarm.
The 14-point initiative came after two calls made by Poroshenko to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to try to garner his support.
Russia ´masking´ support -But separatists said they would not lay down their arms, until Kiev had pulled back its forces.
Most of the equipment being gathered in southwest Russia is no longer used by Russian forces "and we believe that Russia may soon provide this equipment to separatists," the US official said.
The equipment is of a type still used by Ukrainian forces "leaving the impression that the desire here is to mask the Russian hand and allow the separatists to assert ... that this is materiel that they've captured on the battlefield from Ukrainians."
Nato on Thursday reported another unannounced build-up of Russian forces near Ukraine that Alliance chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen called "a very regrettable step backwards."
Rasmussen said the Russian military had deployed "at least a few thousand more" troops in what appeared to be a reversal of the pullback Moscow had begun at the start of the month.
But the Kremlin´s official spokesman said the forces were just implementing Putin´s earlier instructions to "reinforce the protection of the Russian border".
The issue of Ukraine is going to be high on the agenda of Nato talks next week in Brussels.
The US and EU allies are working on a three-point plan which includes supporting Poroshenko´s peace plan and warning Moscow of "more costs" if it does not work to de-escalate the situation, the US official said.
Source : http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-1-257372-Russia-re-deploying-forces-near-Ukraine-border
