Putin again orders troops to pull back from border
NATO says it sees no change; Russia also tells Kiev to back off
MOSCOW — The Kremlin announced yesterday that President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops conducting exercises along the Ukrainian border to return to their home bases at the conclusion of the drills, apparently sending another loud signal that Russia does not plan military action in eastern Ukraine ahead of that country’s presidential election on Sunday.
However, the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Western allies had seen no sign of a withdrawal of Russian forces. During a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Rasmussen noted that it was the third such statement by Putin without any evidence of a pullback of troops or equipment from the Ukrainian border.
The Kremlin statement said Putin had ordered the withdrawal of military units conducting drills in the Rostov, Belgorod and Bryansk regions of western Russia.
At the same time, the statement called for “the immediate halt of punitive operations and use of force” by the Ukrainian government, and it demanded “resolution of the various problems through peaceful means alone.”
Even as a series of national talks have begun in Ukraine aimed at resolving the country’s political crisis, the provisional government in the capital, Kiev, has pressed on with a security operation aimed at suppressing the armed proRussia separatists in eastern Ukraine. The government refers to the separatists, who have seized some public buildings, as terrorists.
Sporadic violence, including injuries and deaths, has continued throughout eastern Ukraine in recent days. On Sunday night, local news agencies reported that armed proRussia separatists had seized a police station in the city of Luhansk.
The Kremlin’s call for an end to the Ukrainian government’s campaign against the separatists was reiterated by the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, at a news conference in Moscow yesterday.
“We still insist on the first unconditional step: a halt of the so-called anti-terrorist operation, which is turning into actions aimed at terrorizing citizens of Ukraine just for their political convictions,” Lavrov said.
The Kremlin statement offered some praise for the negotiations in Ukraine, which involve discussions of two plans to give more authority to local officials.
The Kiev government is pushing a decentralization plan that would give more budget authority to municipal officials while turning governors into regional representatives of a strong national government. Russia, meanwhile, has advocated a federalization plan that would weaken the central government in Kiev in favor of regional governors.
In a sign of the continuing mistrust, Lavrov warned against any effort by Kiev to use the talks as public window dressing while secretly pursuing other changes in government structure behind the scenes in Parliament.