Nerves high as Russian tanks roll
MOSCOW: Russia has rolled its tanks across Belarus in live-fire drills that drew an ominous warning from NATO and added urgency to Western efforts to avert a feared invasion of Ukraine.
NATO said Russia’s deployment of missiles, heavy armour and troops marked a “dangerous moment” for Europe some three decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned Russia against testing Western allies.
“In this critical situation for all of us Russia should not underestimate our unity and determination as a partner in the EU and as an ally in NATO,” Mr Scholz warned, adding: “We take the concerns of our allies very seriously.”
Mr Scholz will travel to Kiev and Moscow next week for separate meetings with the Ukrainian and Russian leaders – including his first in-person meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s war games are set to run until February 20 – the end of the Beijing Olympics – and they follow a gradual Russian military buildup around Ukraine that some US estimates say has reached 130,000 soldiers grouped in dozens of combat brigades.
Western leaders have been shuttling to Moscow in an effort to keep the lines of communication open, giving Russia a chance to air its grievances about NATO’s expansion into eastern Europe and ex-Soviet states.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss took a tough message to Moscow, accusing Russia of adopting a “threatening posture” and urging the Kremlin to withdraw its forces to prove it had no plans to attack.
Kiev denounced the war games as “psychological pressure”, while French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the military exercises “a very violent gesture”.
In a bid to “reduce the chances of miscalculation” during the drills, US and Belarusian defence chiefs held rare telephone talks, according to a statement from the Pentagon.
Russia has also sent six warships through the Bosphorus for naval drills on the Black Sea and the neighbouring Sea of Azov. Kiev has condemned their presence as an “unprecedented” attempt to cut off Ukraine.
Moscow and Minsk have not disclosed how many troops are participating in the war games, but the US has said about 30,000 soldiers were dispatched to Belarus. Russia’s defence ministry said the exercises would centre around “suppressing and repelling external aggression”.
The Kremlin has insisted that the troops will go home after the exercises, but Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said “the accumulation of forces at the border is psychological pressure”.
Kiev has launched its own military drills expected to mirror Russia’s games, but officials have said little about them out of apparent fear of escalating tensions.
“All the (Russian) talk about some mythical threat from NATO or Ukraine is nonsense,” Ukrainian Foreign Minster Dmytro Kuleba said. Russia wants to secure written guarantees that NATO will withdraw its presence from eastern Europe and never expand into Ukraine.
The US and NATO have officially rejected Russia’s demands, and Washington has floated the idea of the sides striking a new disarmament agreement for Europe.