Satellite photos show 40,000 Russian troops near Ukraine border

MONS (Belgium) — NATO has presented satellite photographs it said showed Russian deployments of 40,000 troops near the Ukrainian frontier along with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery and aircraft ready for action.

“This is a force that is very capable, at high readiness, and, as we have illustrated through the imagery, is close to routes and lines of communication,” British Brigadier Gary Deakin said during a briefing at NATO military headquarters at Mons in southern Belgium on Thursday.

“It has the resources to be able to move quickly into Ukraine if it was ordered to do so,” he said.

If Russian political leaders took a decision to send forces into Ukraine, the first Russian forces could be on the move within 12 hours.

NATO has spotted Russian forces at more than 100 different sites close to the Ukraine border, he said.

The West is worried that Moscow could send forces into the east of Ukraine following its annexation of Crimea last month, though Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday his country did not want to take over more Ukraine territory.

NATO, a Western alliance, showed the pictures supplied by commercial satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe to bolster its warnings of a Russian military build-up that could threaten Ukraine.

Russia has denied any substantial build-up on the Ukrainian border, but says it has the right to protect ethnic Russians and Russian speakers who are dominant in regions of eastern Ukraine.

Russia must withdraw its troops from the border and enter into sincere dialogue with the West, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said yesterday on a visit to Bulgaria, a NATO member.

An official in the Russian military general staff said the NATO satellite photographs had been taken in August 2013, state-run news agency RIA reported.

“These photographs that were distributed by NATO depict units of Russian forces of the Southern Military District, which conducted various exercises last summer, some of them near the border with Ukraine,” RIA quoted what it said was a high-level official in the Russian general staff as saying. A NATO official responded that the images were from March and April this year and each image showed the date it was taken.

Mr Lavrov said yesterday Russia did not want to take over more Ukrainian territory, but repeated a call for Kiev to grant more powers to regional authorities, RIA reported.

“We cannot have such a desire. It contradicts the core interests of the Russian Federation. We want Ukraine to be whole within its current borders, but whole with full respect for the regions,” RIA quoted Mr Lavrov as saying.

NATO and the United States have accused Russia of stirring separatist unrest in cities in eastern Ukraine where pro-Moscow protesters have taken over public administration buildings and demanded more autonomy from Kiev.

Separately, Crimean lawmakers adopted a new constitution, taking another step to cement the region’s absorption into Russia despite strong objections from the Muslim Tatar minority. AGENCIES