Ukraine: UK claims Russia has moved troops into ‘attack areas’
Russia has begun to move its troops into “attack areas” on the Ukrainian border despite the Kremlin’s claims that it is pulling back its soldiers, UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has said.
Wallace, speaking from Nato’s headquarters in Brussels today, told Times Radio he had seen “some movement of Russian military forces from sort of holding areas to more front-footed deployed areas”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also told the BBC that “we don’t see any withdrawal yet, we’ve just heard about it”.
Moscow earlier today announced it is bringing back troops from Crimea, a Ukrainian territory that Russia annexed in 2014, amid wider claims from the Kremlin that it is de-escalating the conflict.
“Units of the Southern Military District, having completed their participation in tactical exercises, are moving to their permanent deployment points,” a Russian defence department spokesperson said.
It comes after an announcement yesterday that the first Russian troops were being pulled back from the Ukrainian border and assurances from Russian President Vladimir Putin that he has no plans to invade his neighbour.
Wallace today said he hadn’t seen any evidence of a Russian de-escalation on the Ukrainian border.
UK intelligence believes there are still 130,000 troops on the border and has seen evidence that Russia is still building military field hospitals in preparation for conflict.
Wallace announced tonight that the UK is increasing the number of troops and weapons stationed in Eastern European Nato allies.
“I’ve been a soldier … you don’t deploy strategic weapons systems, you don’t build field hospitals, if you’re just going for a training exercise,” Wallace said.
Speaking today, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said: “So far we have not seen any Russian de-escalation, on the contrary.
“It remains to be seen whether there is a Russian withdrawal. We hope they withdraw forces and that would be the best contribution to a peaceful solution.”
Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said it was “wrong” to suggest there were no signs of de-escalation and denied the Kremlin had overseen last night’s cyber attacks on the Ukrainian government.
“As expected, Ukraine continues blaming Russia for everything. Russia has nothing to do with any DDOS attacks,” Peskov said.