Russia seeks to calm fears it intends push military deeper into Ukraine

Russia has sought to calm rising fears in Kiev and the West that it intends to push its military deeper into Ukraine, amid continuing pro-Moscow protests in unstable eastern regions of the country.

“The aim of [Vladimir] Putin is not Crimea but all of Ukraine,” Ukraine’s national security council chief Andriy Parubiy said of Russia’s leader yesterday at a rally in Kiev.

“His troops massed at the border are ready to attack at any moment,” Mr Parubiy said, as Russian forces continued to evict Ukrainian servicemen from military facilities in Crimea, which Moscow annexed last week.

Visiting the United States, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Deshchytsia said the “situation is becoming even more explosive than it used to be a week ago . . . We do not know what Putin has in his mind.”

“The Ukraine government is trying to use all the peaceful and diplomatic means to stop the Russians, but the people are also ready to defend their homeland . . . we are ready to respond,” he added.

'Defend against it'
Nato's supreme allied commander in Europe, US airforce general Philip Breedlove, said the number of Russian forces now gathered near Ukraine's border after a series of exercises was "very, very sizeable and very, very ready".

“You cannot defend against that if you are not there to defend against it. So I think we need to think about our allies, the positioning of our forces in the alliance and the readiness of those forces . . . such that we can be there to defend against it if required, especially in the Baltics and other places.”

The three Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, unlike Ukraine, are Nato and EU members. They have substantial ethnic-Russian populations, and Mr Putin has often complained their rights are abused.

There is also rising concern about Moldova, another former Soviet state that wants to move towards the EU and Nato, but which is dogged by a "frozen conflict" with Russian-backed separatists in its Transdniestria region, which borders southwestern Ukraine. Moscow already has several hundred soldiers in the region acting as peacekeepers and guarding a very large depot of Soviet-era weapons.

“There is absolutely sufficient [Russian] force postured on the eastern border of Ukraine to run to Transdniestria if the decision was made to do that and that is very worrisome,” Gen Breedlove said.

'Strenghten Nato's presence'
The EU and US have imposed asset freezes and travel restrictions on Russian officials, and have warned that more sanctions will be announced if Moscow refuses to change course on Ukraine.

“What we can do is strengthen Nato’s presence, particularly in the countries surrounding Ukraine, and also provide assistance to the Ukrainian military,” US Republican senator Kelly Ayotte said on a visit to Kiev, referring to possible supplies of small arms and technical equipment. She also urged the White House to “do more with sanctions, including sanctioning the entire financial sector of the Russian economy, as well as looking at the energy sector.” Democratic senator Richard Durbin said Ukraine’s military needed “everything from fuel to tyres to sleeping bags to meals”.

“We’ve got to strengthen them and help them with advice and backing, and it may come to small arms,” he added.

Russia's military says it is sticking to internationally agreed troop limits near Ukraine, and its diplomats claim no -one should fear Moscow's intentions, even though Mr Putin has threatened to use force to defend Russians in other countries. "Nobody has anything to fear from Russia, nobody in this world," said Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's ambassador to the EU.

'Radioactive ash'
Russian state television's flagship weekly news show, which promotes Kremlin policy and is presented by a staunch ally of Mr Putin, last night began with a large graphic stating: "There will not be war".

Last Sunday, host Dmitry Kiselyov stood before a picture of a nuclear mushroom cloud and said only Russia was “realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash.”

Major cities in eastern Ukraine, including Kharkiv and Donetsk, saw another round of demonstrations over the weekend demanding closer ties with Russia and calling for a referendum on transferring powers from Kiev to the regions. Several thousand people marched to local government buildings that were guarded by hundreds of police.

“The government is not listening to us, they are showing us no respect,” said Denis Simonenko, a protester in Kharkiv. “They are fascists, neo-Nazis from western Ukraine, and they want to join the EU and Nato – we reject that and don’t recognise these so-called leaders.”

Russian media have for months described Ukraine’s revolutionaries as Russian-hating fascists, despite the presence of many ethnic Russians among demonstrators on Kiev’s Independence Square and the absence of any evidence of a rise in ethnically motivated violence.