Ukraine, in a shift of tone, warns of Russia-backed military exercises
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES
The drills tested the force’s preparation for live fire operations, practising “driving artillery, tank and armoured vehicles” in field exercises, the Ukrainian statement said. Some units of the force were put on their highest level of alert, it said, and senior Russian military officers were observing the activity.Ukraine’s military warned Friday that Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east are conducting military exercises, completing a near encirclement of Ukraine by hostile forces, even as diplomatic initiatives have failed to gain traction. On Friday, President Joe Biden was expected to hold a phone call with 10 other trans-Atlantic leaders “to discuss our shared concerns about Russia’s continued buildup of military forces around Ukraine and continued coordination on both diplomacy and deterrence,” the White House said in a statement.“It would be good if during the second meeting we could agree on something,” Andriy Yermak, Ukraine’s chief negotiator, said. After nine hours of talks the negotiators could not agree on a joint statement. “It went the way it did today,” Yermak said. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has offered to mediate, a proposal accepted by Ukraine but declined by Russia. Next week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is scheduled to visit Kyiv and Moscow. And Russian officials have said they will respond in writing to proposals for security talks offered by the United States and NATO. Russia has made a series of demands of the West, including scaling back the NATO military presence in Eastern Europe to 1990s levels and guaranteeing that Ukraine could never join NATO. The United States has called those demands “nonstarters” and instead offered a series of proposals aimed at arms control.