NATO’s top commander said Wednesday that the alliance has seen columns of Russian troops, armored vehicles and heavy guns entering eastern Ukraine over the last two days.
U.S. Gen. Philip Breedlove told reporters during a visit to Bulgaria that the border between Ukraine and Russia where Moscow-backed separatists are in control is now “completely wide open” to infusions of foreign fighting power into the conflict area.
“We have seen columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air-defense systems and Russian combat troops entering Ukraine,” Breedlove said.
He said NATO didn’t have a firm number on the invading vehicles but said they were in “multiple columns.”
“Forces, money, support, supplies, weapons are flowing back and forth across this border completely at will and that is not a good situation,” Breedlove said.
The NATO commander said the alliance sightings confirmed reports this week by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe of at least three columns of tanks, armored vehicles and trucks towing howitzers and multiple-rocket launchers. Gunmen in green uniforms without insignia also were reported to be flooding into the front-line areas from the east.
Russia’s Defense Ministry called the NATO allegations “completely untrue,” the Tass news agency reported.
“We have already stopped paying attention to these baseless allegations,” said Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, according to the RIA Novosti news agency, which this week changed its name to Sputnik News.
In Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that reserves had been called up, the military was aware of the invaders’ positions and that the main task for Ukraine’s armed forces now is “to prepare for fighting.”
The buildups on both sides of the conflict that has killed 4,000 since April were the latest and most ominous signs that a relative lull in fighting that followed a Sept. 5 cease-fire agreement has ended and an intensified phase is looming.
The United Nations Security Council was convening Wednesday to discuss the deteriorating security situation in eastern Ukraine. But Russia, as a veto-wielding permanent member of the council, has blocked all previous attempts by the body to cite or censure its role in the Ukrainian conflict.
U.N., European and other Western governments lambasted Russia for supporting Nov. 2 elections staged by the separatists occupying Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which purported to empower government and legislative leaders for what they contend are independent republics.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and advised him to persuade Ukraine’s government to deal directly with the separatist leaders to put an end to the deadly conflict, the Tass news agency reported.
“When exchanging opinions on the current situation in Ukraine’s southeast, Lavrov specially underlined that organizing stable direct dialogue between Kiev and Lugansk and Donetsk is a priority in the context of elections held there,” Tass said of the conversation with Kerry.
While no country has recognized the May independence declarations of the two “people’s republics,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said after the Nov. 2 votes that Moscow “respects the will expression of the residents of the southeast,” effectively recognizing the rogue leaders as legitimate representatives of the breakaway regions.
