Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[mongers]

Russia is accusing Ukraine of attacking the Crimea. Thread title might need an update for the year soon.

Yeah nice spot.

If things get serious, what about just dropping dates?

[CountDeMoney]

Russia is accusing Ukraine of attacking the Crimea. Thread title might need an update for the year soon.

Meh, it's only because the Olympics are going on.  Makes those people over there all nationalist and crazy and shit. 

[DGuller]

I bet mongers is waiting with bated breath for the Russian tanks to roll in, just to have an excuse to excercise his thread title powers.

[mongers]

I bet mongers is waiting with bated breath for the Russian tanks to roll in, just to have an excuse to excercise his thread title powers.

How did you guess Putin was working with me, to enable a change in this thread's title? 

[CountDeMoney]

Still working from the same shitty, unimaginative "Choose Your Own Adventure" playbook.

Tensions rise around Crimea: Putin accuses Ukraine of 'terror' and Kiev beefs up military
LA Times

Tensions ratcheted up Thursday around the Russian-annexed province of Crimea, as Ukraine's president ordered the reinforcement of nearby military installations and Crimea's pro-Moscow leader accused the United States of meddling in the dispute.
The developments came one day after Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of sending armed "terrorist" groups to the Black Sea peninsula and threatened to withdraw from peace talks on the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
That conflict has pitted pro-Russia forces against Ukraine's Western-leaning government. In February 2014, thousands of troops in unmarked uniforms appeared in Crimea, which was once part of Russia but had been transferred to Ukraine under Soviet rule. The troops forced Ukrainian service members to pledge allegiance to Russia or lay down their guns and leave.
Weeks later, in an election that was not recognized by the international community, Crimea's citizens voted to become part of Russia.
Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet KGB, charged that two Russian servicemen were killed in separate armed clashes with groups of Ukrainian spies over the weekend. One of the alleged spies was detained and claimed that Ukraine's Defense Ministry dispatched his group to organize terrorist attacks in Crimea, the FSB said in a statement issued Wednesday.
Russia's Kremlin-controlled television networks showed a bruised, handcuffed man they identified as the detained spy, and aired images of bags filled with explosives, land mines and ammunition that the spies reportedly brought to carry out the terrorist attacks.
In the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, President Petro Poroshenko dismissed Russia's claims and said Moscow concocted them to justify its military involvement in Ukraine.
"These fantasies are but an excuse to come up with more threats of military [action] against Ukraine," he said in a statement issued by his office.
Poroshenko tweeted that he also ordered the reinforcement of military installations that border Crimea and the breakaway regions.
Putin had said in televised remarks late Wednesday that Ukraine has "switched to terror practices instead of looking for a peace settlement."
He lambasted Kiev for sabotaging the peace talks over the breakaway regions, including the separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, where tensions escalated in recent weeks and a separatist leader was wounded in a car crash Saturday. Putin called on the United States and the European Union to push Ukraine to resume the talks.
"Most importantly, those who support the current authorities in Kiev have to, after all, make up their mind about what they want," he said. "Do they want their clients to keep staging provocations of this kind or do they want a real peace settlement?"
A Ukrainian political analyst said he doubted the veracity of Putin's claims, which he believed were part of Russia's efforts to force Ukraine to give up the breakaway regions.
"This is a murky story, hardly believable, but what's important is its consequences," Vadim Karasyov of the Institute of Global Strategies, a think tank, said in an interview Thursday. Putin is "criminally blackmailing the West so that it forces Ukraine to fulfill the Minsk agreements."
He was referring to a cease-fire accord Russia and Ukraine signed in 2014 in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus. The deal, however, failed to stop the fighting as Ukraine and separatist authorities accused each other of breaking it.
An analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, an independent think tank, said that Putin's claims were aimed at boosting the Kremlin's popularity before parliamentary elections in September.
"He constantly needs a series of quasi-wars to keep the pro-Putin majority mobilized," Andrei Kolesnikov said in an interview. "It's very hard to believe in a [military] operation that is extremely unfavorable for Poroshenko and very beneficial for Putin."
Meanwhile, Crimea's pro-Moscow leader accused the United States of urging Ukrainian authorities to organize the purported terrorist attacks.
"These are not their own actions and messages, [because] the U.S. State Department is looming behind them," Sergei Aksyonov told the Russia-24 television channel.
The Obama administration did not specifically respond to the charge but said Thursday that it was alarmed at rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia and called for both countries to exercise restraint.
"We believe that any actions, including rhetoric, including remarks, have the ability to escalate what is already a very tense situation and a very dangerous situation," State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said.
The U.S. position, she added, is well known: "Crimea is part of Ukraine and is recognized as such by the international community."
In recent weeks, independent observers and Crimean Tatar activists claimed that Russia has moved troops, tanks and artillery to the Ukrainian border. Tatars are a Muslim minority that has lived in Crimea for centuries and faced increasing pressure from Russian authorities after the annexation.
Dozens of Ukrainian service members, pro-Russia militants and civilians have been killed in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks amid escalating violence and almost daily shelling.

Russia Launches Naval Exercises in Black Sea Amid Escalating Standoff with Ukraine
ForeignPolicy.com
By Reid Standish
August 11, 2016 - 3:05 pm
Reid.Standish  @reidstan

One day after Russia accused Ukraine of attempted incursions across the de-facto border into Crimea, the territory annexed by Moscow in 2014, Kiev put its military on high-alert and the Kremlin announced the start of war games in the Black Sea, raising fears of a return to open war in the country for the first time in more than a year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with members of his Security Council on Thursday to discuss mounting tensions with Kiev in Crimea. According to the Kremlin's press service, the Russian leader pledged to take countermeasures "along the land border, offshore, and in Crimean airspace" against Ukraine, which he accused on Wednesday of sending intelligence agents into Crimea to carry out terrorist acts and provoke a conflict with Moscow. The Russian Defense Ministry also announced that it will hold naval exercises in the Black Sea — off the coast of Crimea — to practice countering underwater attacks by "saboteurs."

The Russian drills — which will last from August 11 to 13 — are part of the already planned Caucasus-2016 naval exercises by the Russian Defense Ministry in the region, but their timing has left Ukrainian officials worried that the heightened military activity could escalate quickly into a direct conflict with Moscow.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered his country's army to be on combat alert near Crimea and along the front line in eastern Ukraine — which has seen an uptick in fighting in recent weeks. Oleh Slobodyan, a spokesman for the Ukrainian border guards, told reporters on Thursday that Russia has massed troops near Crimea's northern border with mainland Ukraine.

"These troops are coming with more modern equipment and there are air assault units," Slobodyan said during a briefing in Kiev.

The chain of events that have resulted in the current standoff remain murky. On Wednesday, the FSB announced that two different incidents had taken place: a raid on a terror cell in Crimea over the weekend that left one FSB officer and an accused Ukrainian intelligence officer dead, and an exchange of gunfire across the Crimean border that left one Russian soldier dead. Kiev, however, has denied any involvement in a terrorist plot or in a firefight with the Russian military, calling the FSB's claims "false information" and accusing the Kremlin of using the scenario as a pretext for war.

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt also disputed Moscow's version of events, saying on Twitter that: "Russia has a record of frequently levying false accusations at Ukraine to deflect attention from its own illegal actions."

Adding to the confusion on the ground, Valery Kondratyuk, the head of intelligence at Ukraine's Ministry of Defense, said during a meeting with Poroshenko on Thursday that a skirmish had taken place over the weekend in Crimea between the Russian military and border guards in Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB — not with Ukrainian forces as alleged by the Russian agency.

Kiev took further measures on Thursday, with Vadim Troyan, the acting head of Ukraine's National Police Force, announcing that a kidnapping investigation has been launched into the disappearance of Evgeny Panov, the alleged Ukrainian intelligence officer the FSB has in custody. The security service says that Panov tried to infiltrate Crimea in order to carry out a series of terrorist attacks. According to reports in Ukrainian media, Panov is a former volunteer in the Ukrainian armed forces who fought in the war in eastern Ukraine against pro-Russian separatists. His family says that he went missing over the weekend and his brother reportedly believes he was kidnapped.

Amid the growing accusations, insults, and aggressive rhetoric from Moscow and Kiev, Poroshenko instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to arrange a phone conversation with Putin to discuss the mounting tensions. However, it remains to be seen how receptive the Russian leader will be to talking with his Ukrainian counterpart. During comments to the press on Wednesday, Putin accused Ukraine of resorting to terrorism and that continuing in internationally-backed talks on the war in eastern Ukraine  — slated to pick up in a few weeks during the G20 summit in China — were "pointless."

Both the European Union and the United States have tied the decision to remove economic sanctions on Russia to the success of the Minsk deal — the peace process brokered in the capital of Belarus in February 2015. However, both Moscow and Kiev have become frustrated with the stalled and often violated agreement. Russia has accused the Ukrainian government of refusing to live up to the terms of the truce, exchanging fire in eastern Ukraine and denying elections in the separatist held areas of Donetsk and Luhansk. Kiev has rebuffed the charges and insisted that Russia has no interest in observing the peace deal or preserving the status quo.

[DGuller]

Why do these Eastern Europeans always insist on carrying out meaningless acts of terror against neighbors that are already about to invade them?

[alfred russel]

Why do these Eastern Europeans always insist on carrying out meaningless acts of terror against neighbors that are already about to invade them?

I know you are being tongue in cheek, but it is worth remembering that governments and other groups in the region have a propensity toward really stupid and counterproductive actions.

[Martinus]

Rumour "in the street" in Poland is that Russo-Ukrainian war is restarting - which seems in line with the news CdM posted above. Also, gotta give it to Putin that this is a perfect time to do so. Both the US and the UK/Europe are too preoccupied with their own shit to do anything meaningful about it (and I don't even mean any sort of military response, but actually any serious sanctions).

[Syt]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/2/russia-warns-nato-against-troop-deployment-to-ukraine

Russia warns NATO against deploying troops to Ukraine

Moscow will act to 'ensure its security' if the alliance intervenes in the conflict, which has seen fresh fighting.

Russia has warned NATO against deploying troops to Ukraine, saying such a move would escalate tensions nears its borders, amid renewed fears over the region's long-simmering conflict.

Moscow's comments came after NATO voiced concern on Thursday over what it said was a large Russian military build-up near eastern Ukraine, with leading member the United States pledging to stand by Ukraine in the event of any Russian "aggression".

Renewed front-line clashes have gripped the region in recent weeks.

Russia earlier said an escalation in the conflict in Ukraine's Donbass region could "destroy" Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the situation at the contact line in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatist forces was concerning, and that multiple "provocations" were taking place there.

Peskov also said Russia would be forced to respond if NATO troops were deployed to Ukraine as he insisted Russia was not threatening Ukraine.

"There is no doubt such a scenario would lead to a further increase in tensions close to Russia's borders. Of course, this would call for additional measures from the Russian side to ensure its security," he said, without specifying which measures would be adopted.

"Russia is not threatening anyone, it has never threatened anyone."

Ukraine has been battling pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions since 2014, following Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula after an uprising that toppled Ukraine's Kremlin-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych.

Moscow and Kyiv this week blamed each other for a rise in violence that has undermined a ceasefire brokered last year.

Peskov's comments came after the US warned Russia against "intimidating" Ukraine, with both Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling their Ukrainian counterparts to stress support.

The Pentagon said earlier this week that US forces in Europe had raised their alert status following the "recent escalations of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine".

Moscow, Kyiv trade barbs

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday accused Russia of massing troops on the border and said 20 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed since the start of the year.

Ukraine's military intelligence accused Russia of preparing to "expand its military presence" in the separatist-controlled regions.

Moscow has repeatedly denied sending troops and arms to support the separatists. The Kremlin has said that Russia is at liberty to move troops on its own territory.

"Russia is not a participant of the conflict," Peskov said on Friday, accusing Ukraine's armed forces of "multiple" provocations in the region.

A senior Russian official also dismissed reports of a plan to attack Ukraine as "fake".

"Russia is not interested in any conflict with Ukraine, especially a military one," deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko told state news agency RIA Novosti.

To date, the fighting in the region has killed more than 13,000 people, according to the United Nations.

[jimmy olsen]

Isn't this all about the canal that Ukraine dammed after Russia took Crimea? The peninsula's running low on water and if the Russians want to seize the source of the canal than they have to go 60kms into Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1377432142867664899

[KRonn]

Unsettling developments as both Russia and Ukraine move forces to the border. Russia heavily outnumbers Ukraine in the air but it's a lot closer with ground forces from the article I saw earlier. But still Ukraine would be the underdog. In that article there were also reports about separatist groups recruiting or conscripting people in Eastern Ukraine.

[Berkut]

Unsettling developments as both Russia and Ukraine move forces to the border. Russia heavily outnumbers Ukraine in the air but it's a lot closer with ground forces from the article I saw earlier. But still Ukraine would be the underdog. In that article there were also reports about separatist groups recruiting or conscripting people in Eastern Ukraine.

This sounds a  lot like Russian propaganda Kronn.

"both sides moving troops to the border" sounds like a tit for tat. It is not.

The Ukraine moving troops to the area of conflict is a sovereign nation trying to keep control within their own country. The need for Ukrainian troops within the Ukraine in the area where pro-Russian separatists are fighting seems rather self evident.

What utility is there in Russia moving troops within Russia to the Ukrainian border? What possible reason could there be for that - does Russia actually want us to believe that the Ukraine might invade Russia? The idea is preposterous.

[mongers]

Putin is preparing a challenge to test Biden's resolve and perhaps to exploit the divisions within NATO that were created or worsened by his  chief asset in the West over the last four years.

[viper37]

Putin is preparing a challenge to test Biden's resolve and perhaps to exploit the divisions within NATO that were created or worsened by his  chief asset in the West over the last four years.

yes, that.  He's just testing NATO's resolve.  Well, the US, mostly.   If all the US does is protest, he'll march in his troops. If NATO move assets over there to strenghten its position, he will back off, not silently, but he will back off.

[KRonn]

Unsettling developments as both Russia and Ukraine move forces to the border. Russia heavily outnumbers Ukraine in the air but it's a lot closer with ground forces from the article I saw earlier. But still Ukraine would be the underdog. In that article there were also reports about separatist groups recruiting or conscripting people in Eastern Ukraine.

This sounds a  lot like Russian propaganda Kronn.

"both sides moving troops to the border" sounds like a tit for tat. It is not.

The Ukraine moving troops to the area of conflict is a sovereign nation trying to keep control within their own country. The need for Ukrainian troops within the Ukraine in the area where pro-Russian separatists are fighting seems rather self evident.

What utility is there in Russia moving troops within Russia to the Ukrainian border? What possible reason could there be for that - does Russia actually want us to believe that the Ukraine might invade Russia? The idea is preposterous.

I would think aspects of the issues are Ukraine worried about Russia's intentions if Russian separatists are recruiting people in eastern Ukraine. Russia could be posturing with their troops to support the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine whether Russia actually invades or not. It shouldn't be any surprise given the actions of Russia for a while now.