“We call on Russia to clarify its intentions” regarding “the unusual military activity in Russia near the Ukrainian border,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, stressing that what is suspicious of these Russian military moves is their “scale” and “scope.”
For his part, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said during a joint press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Washington: “We do not have clarity about Moscow’s intentions, but we know its strategy.”
“We fear that Russia will make a grave mistake by trying to repeat what it did in 2014, when it massed its forces along the border and entered sovereign Ukrainian territory, falsely claiming that it was provoked,” the US secretary added.
Blinken explained that the strategy that the Russians used in Ukraine in the past was to “make provocations to implement what they had planned from the beginning.”
And the chief of US diplomacy warned that “if there are provocations today, they come from Russia, with these troop movements we see along the Ukrainian border.”
Blinken stressed that the United States is following these military moves “closely” and in consultation with its allies, noting the “remarkable restraint” shown by Kiev in this regard.
The US Secretary reiterated to his Ukrainian counterpart the US’ “unwavering” support for the “sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
For its part, the Pentagon called on Moscow to “respect the Minsk agreements,” which stipulate, in particular, the demilitarization of the Russian-Ukrainian border.
And US media had reported at the end of October about Russian forces’ movements near the Ukrainian border, in a development that the Pentagon had only commented on at the time, saying that it was “closely monitoring the border,” without details.
During the joint press conference with Blinken, the Ukrainian foreign minister welcomed this US support because “the best way to have deterrence in the face of Russia’s aggressiveness” is “to show the Kremlin clearly that Ukraine is strong, and that it also has strong allies who will not leave it alone in the face of Moscow’s ever-increasing aggressiveness.” “.
At the beginning of November, Kiev denied any unusual Russian military moves.
On that day, the Ukrainian army confirmed that the reported Russian military movements were a “transfer of forces after training”, spreading rumors of Russian army reinforcements near the Ukrainian border as part of a possible “psychological” war against Kiev.
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