Military leaders in Ukraine charged Russia was
deepening its foray into Ukrainian territory and
sending new troops to the Crimean border.
Russian soldiers, tanks and
heavy artillery began rolling into southeastern
Ukraine in earnest Thursday, the Ukrainian
government said, as well-armed detachments
captured key towns, burned buildings and sent the
underequipped Ukrainian forces into full retreat —
a show of military force that the United States
now considers an invasion in all but name.
U.S. officials began saying privately for the first
time Thursday that they consider the escalation of
recent days tantamount to a Russian invasion,
but President Obama stopped short of using the
term at a news conference late in the afternoon.
He said the United States will continue to rely on
sanctions in an effort to deter Russia.
“Russia is responsible for the violence in eastern
Ukraine,” he said. “Russia has deliberately and
repeatedly violated the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of Ukraine.”
But he said the problem will not be solved with
U.S. or outside military action. “A military
solution to this problem is not going to be
forthcoming,” he said.
Buttressing the Ukrainian accounts, NATO
released satellite images Thursday of what it said
were Russian artillery, vehicles and troops in and
around eastern Ukraine. One image showed what
NATO officials said was a convoy with self-
propelled artillery in the area of Krasnodon, inside
territory controlled by Russian-backed
separatists, on Aug. 21.
A satellite image from Aug. 21 shows what NATO
says are Russian self-propelled artillery units at
an undisclosed location inside Ukraine. (NATO/
DigitalGlobe/EPA)
“There is no doubt that this is not a homegrown,
indigenous uprising in eastern Ukraine. The
separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed
by Russia,” Obama said.
Russian actions will be a main topic for the
summit of NATO leaders next week in Wales,
Obama said.
The Russian Defense Ministry reiterated its
position again Thursday, saying no Russian
military units had taken part in action in Ukraine,
according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that lists of
Russian military units circulating on the Internet
are fake. Russia has previously admitted that 10
of its paratroopers were captured in Ukraine, but
said they were there because they wandered into
the country by mistake.
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Russian and American diplomats clashed during
an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security
Council on Thursday, with Samantha Power, the
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying
that Russia has “outright lied” about its
involvement in the conflict.
She said that Russian President Vladimir Putin
had spoken of the need to “end the bloodshed as
soon as possible” in a meeting with Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko just Tuesday. At the
same time, she noted — citing the NATO satellite
imagery — Russian combat units were rolling into
the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin countered
that Washington should stop interfering and
called the Russian soldiers in Ukraine
“volunteers.”
“There are Russian volunteers in eastern parts of
Ukraine. No one is hiding that,” he said. He
suggested that Ukraine was supported by Western
advisers and funding.
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Russian military allegedly enters and attacks
Ukrainian forces.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman
Jen Psaki would not publicly brand Russian
actions as an invasion, although other U.S.
officials said privately that is the conclusion the
United States has made.
“Our focus is more on what Russia is doing, what
we’re going to do about it, than what we’re
calling it,” Psaki said. “What they’re doing is an
incursion. It’s a violation of Ukraine’s
sovereignty.”
Russia, she said, has “stepped up its presence in
eastern Ukraine,” intervened “directly with combat
forces, armored vehicles, artillery, and surface-to-
air systems,” and is “actively fighting Ukrainian
forces as well as playing a direct supporting role
to the separatists proxies and mercenaries.”
Another U.S. official, speaking on the condition of
anonymity to describe the behind-the-scenes
diplomacy, said the purpose of Russia’s “armed
intervention” may be to try to open a land route
to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine
earlier this year. It may also be to test Ukrainian
and Western responses in preparation for such a
land grab later, the official and Western diplomats
said.
In a statement posted on the Kremlin’s Web site
early Friday, Putin urged the separatists in the
east “to open a humanitarian corridor to
Ukrainian soldiers that are surrounded, in order to
avoid pointless victims and provide them the an
opportunity to freely withdraw from the area of
operations.”
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In Kiev on Thursday, a grim-faced Poroshenko
stood in the rain at the airport and addressed the
nation, saying he had canceled his working visit
to Turkey after “sharp aggravation” of the
situation in the east, “as Russian troops were
brought into Ukraine.” He remained closeted with
his national security council for much of the day.
Around Ukraine, locals reacted in varying degrees
of disbelief and shock. In the capital, Kiev, where
pro-European protesters unseated the president in
February, which led to the separatist uprising,
residents grouped around television sets in cafes
to see the latest news from the front. News
filtered out that the country would be stepping up
its military draft.
In Mariupol, a southern port city not far from the
new fighting, a sense of normal life prevailed, to a
degree, one businessman said. But hundreds of
protesters gathered in the sunlit evening to call
for peace.
The situation continued to be grim in the rebel-
controlled strongholds of Luhansk and Donetsk,
where 11 civilians were killed within the past day.
More than 2,200 people have died in the past five
months in a conflict that has left more than
35,000 in temporary camps, with other residents
going without food and sufficient water.
Ukrainians are worried that Russia could cut off
gas supplies to the country as the winter months
approach.
The Ukrainian military said that about 12:30 p.m.
Thursday, two Russian columns of tanks and
armored fighting vehicles entered the town of
Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov after firing on
Ukrainian army positions with rockets launched
from Russian territory, according to a Ukrainian
military spokesman. The spokesman, Col. Andriy
Lysenko, said that after a pitched battle the
overmatched Ukrainian military forces retreated
about 20 miles away to a position near Mariupol.
By late in the day, Russians and their separatist
counterparts were in complete control of
Novoazovsk, the spokesman said, a border town
that had been the focus of intense shelling this
week.
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“There are no Ukrainian solders left in
Novoazovsk,” Lysenko said. He estimated, along
with NATO, that more than 1,000 Russian soldiers
are now in the country illegally.
There have been reports of a Russian BM-27
Uragan missile system in the area, Lysenko said,
aggravating a situation that has become “more
complicated” in the last 24 hours.
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