Russia rejects claims Ukraine facing ‘invasion’
SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine — A senior security official in Ukraine’s caretaker government raised the level of hysteria another notch in central Europe on Wednesday, warning that Russia had 80,000 troops and hundreds of tanks poised near the country’s southeastern border and could make a lightning grab for Kyiv at any time.
The situation had become “critical” and “there was every reason to believe” that the Russian army would invade, said Andriy Parubiy, who oversees Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, and was a leading figure in the violent demonstrations that resulted in the overthrow of president Viktor Yanukovych’s regime on Feb. 22.
“Ukraine now faces the threat of a full-scale invasion” in border areas near the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv and a “full-scale” Russian ground assault could reach Kyiv within two to three hours, Parubiy said.
In rejecting Ukraine’s accusation, Russia’s deputy defence minister, Anatoly Antonov, said it would allow Ukraine to make a surveillance flight over the Russian border area to verify the disposition of Russian forces, The Associated Press reported.
It has always been true since Ukraine got its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 that Russian tanks were only a few hours drive away from most Ukrainian cities, including the capital. However, U.S. politicians with close connections to the intelligence committee have not yet spoken of an imminent threat.
Of far greater immediate concern in western Europe, the U.S. and Canada is Russia’s military occupation of Crimea, which began on or about Feb. 27, and how Moscow will treat the results of a referendum in Crimea on Sunday that will almost certainly back secession from Ukraine and the peninsula’s integration with the Russian Federation.
The concern after that is not whether Russia might try to capture Kyiv, but how President Vladimir Putin intends to answer appeals for help from several million ethnic Russians living just inside Ukraine’s eastern borders. Earlier this week Putin said that he was prepared to “use all means” to protect Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine.
Parubiy’s comments followed reports in the Ukrainian media about Russian military exercises around the nearby city of Astrakhan. The remarks were likely linked with talks that acting prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was having with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House on Wednesday. The Ukrainian goal has been to get Washington to provide emergency military and economic aid.
As has been plain since Russian troops occupied Crimea, there is no military assistance the U.S. could offer Ukraine that would, in the short or medium term, impede, let alone repulse a Russian attack on any part of Ukraine’s territory. The Kremlin’s ground forces in western Russia alone outnumber those in Ukraine by about 40 to one, with an even greater imbalance in air power.
The American hand has been seriously weakened by the removal of hundreds of thousands of its best combat troops from Germany since the Cold War — the so-called peace dividend that came after the Soviet Union fell apart. Canada also claimed its peace dividend, removing 10,000 ground troops and air force personnel from its two bases in Germany’s Black Forest.
Sevastopol’s new mayor, Aleksei Chaliy, who was appointed at a pro-Russia rally two weeks go when Kyiv’s appointee was sacked, kept the pressure up on Wednesday, empowering self-defence units in the city to maintain public order.
The volunteers, who are mostly intimidating-looking young and middle-aged men, will be allowed “to protect (against) possible armed attacks on Sevastopol, protect the lives, health and property” and ensure that voting in this Sunday’s referendum on Crimea’s future was “free and safe,” Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency said, quoting the mayor’s press service.
The volunteers, who wear a motley variety of combat fatigues or the unofficial uniforms of patriotic Cossack fighters, have already been patrolling Sevastopol and manning checkpoints into the city for several days.
These vigilantes, who look a lot like the toughs from ultranationalist Ukrainian groups such as Right Sector, have been on the lookout for large numbers of self-defence fighters from Kyiv who are said by Russian media to be on their way to Crimea. However, there has been no evidence yet that anyone from the Ukrainian mainland is planning to enter Crimea to take on the Russian army and the self-defence units.