Moscow holds tank drills near Ukraine
Troops stage mock battles and live-fire exercises as talks ‘drag’ with the US
Russia has staged live-fire exercises with troops and tanks near the Ukrainian border while sounding a downbeat note over the prospects of talks with the US that Washington hoped would remove the possible threat of an invasion of the country.
A day after the US urged Russia at talks in Geneva to pull back an estimated 100,000 troops from near the border, Moscow’s defence ministry said about 3,000 servicemen had started combat training including mock battles in four regions of southwestern Russia.
The drills suggested that the Kremlin had no intention of easing the military pressure that had brought Washington to the negotiating table, where Moscow had presented demands for sweeping security guarantees from the West.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was positive that Monday’s talks had been held in an open, substantive and direct manner, but added that there was no real cause for optimism.
Russia wanted quick results, he said. “There are no clear deadlines here, no one is setting them – there is just the Russian position that we will not be satisfied with the endless dragging out of this process.”
Peskov said the situation would be clearer after two further rounds of talks that Russia was due to hold this week – with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) in Brussels yesterday and at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna today.
US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland told reporters it was “disappointing to hear” the Kremlin found no cause for optimism in the talks, and said Washington wanted the
“constructive” exchange of views to continue.
Russia staging live-fire exercises “obviously goes in exactly the opposite direction” of the de-escalation Washington wanted to see, Nuland added.
Russia repeatedly said it had no intention of attacking Ukraine but that it had the right to deploy its forces as it deemed fit on its own territory.
Moscow insisted that the US and its allies rule out the possibility that Ukraine could ever join Nato, which promised as far back as in 2008 to admit Kyiv one day. It also asked Nato to remove forces and weaponry from ex-communist countries that had joined it since the end of the Cold War.
Washington said it could not accept these demands, although it was willing to engage on other aspects of the proposals by discussing missile deployments or limits on the size of military drills.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said after the talks in Geneva on Monday that the two sides had “in some ways opposite views”. He told reporters: “For us, it’s absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine never, never, ever becomes a member of Nato.”
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said: “We were firm … in pushing back on security proposals that are simply non-starters to the United States.”
Nato has no immediate plans to admit Ukraine, but said Russia could not dictate its relations with other sovereign states – a stance reaffirmed by Ukraine’s foreign minister on Tuesday.
“Russia does not have the right to vote on Ukraine’s Nato membership. This is a red line that neither Ukraine nor our partners will cross,” Dmytro Kuleba said.
“The starting line for discussing security guarantees in the Euro-Atlantic space should begin with Russia’s de-escalation of the security situation near the Ukrainian border,” he added.