15 July 2014
Unlike any time in its history, Ukraine is on the verge of a widescale military aggression by the Russian government, National Security and Defense Council Deputy Secretary Myhakylo Koval told a July 14 television program. “Truly at the moment Russian armies are situated on Ukraine’s border, with the largest unit in annexed Crimea: 22,000 soldiers of the Russian Armed Forces,” he said. The Russian government has 10,000 to 12,000 soldiers in its border region with Ukraine, said a NATO military officer, anonymously quoted by the Reuters news agency. Earlier, Russia had a large part of its 40,000 soldiers in the border region, having reduced them to less than a thousand by the middle of June. “We saw the relocation of several subunits in the border regions just in the last week,” he said.
The Russian government is accumulating soldiers and military hardware on its border with Ukraine, confirmed on July 14 Andriy Lysenko, the spokesman of the Information Center of the National Security and Defense Council. Attempts are also being made to transport automobiles and armored hardware, he said. “The events of recent days testify to Russia taking the course of escalating the conflict in Donbas,” he said. The Russian government is preparing to deploy its special armed forces in Ukraine on July 15, said Tymchuk of the Information Resistance.
A military transport plane with eight crew members that was shot down in the Luhansk region on July 14 may have been targeted by rocket fire from Russian territory, reported Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey, as reported by the Presidential Administration press service. The plane was shot down while performing a task in ensuring the active phase of the anti-terrorist operation, he said. Given that it flew at a height of 6,500 meters, it couldn’t have been shot down by an anti-aircraft system, but only by a more powerful rocket system, he said.
The attack shooting down the plane could have been performed from the Millyerovo airfield in the Rostov Oblast of Russia, said on July 14 Andriy Lysenko, the spokesman of the Information Center of the National Security and Defense Council. He confirmed Heletey’s claim that none of the anti-aircraft systems possessed by the terrorists could have been responsible. All eight crew members survived, Lysenko said. Two have been taken hostage and the other six have yet to be found by the rescue operation, Tymchuk said.
Zenon Zawada: It’s widely accepted that Russian President Vladimir Putin uses his soldiers as a tactic to gain leverage in negotiations with world leaders. So their relocation doesn’t raise the likelihood of an invasion. Yet the shooting of a transport plane allegedly from Russian territory could prove to be a disturbing incident that demonstrates the Russian government’s willingness to escalate the conflict and provide a pretext for greater intervention in Ukraine. The Ukrainian army victories last week in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk have been quickly overshadowed by such incidents, as well as the erupting violence in the regional centers of Donetsk (population 950,000) and Luhansk (population 424,000). The latter city declared three days of mourning today for 17 civilian deaths and 73 injured.