It is highly unlikely that Kremlin will go the length of initiating an open conflict with Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, a former President of Ukraine, says.
“Russia will draw a line at the open bringing of its troops into Ukraine, They still fail to admit that their regular army is taking part [in the conflict]. Now even a fool realises all these events would not have happened if not for Russia,” he said on Wednesday.
Leonid Kuchma called Russian troops’ and pro-Russian militants’ massive ground offensive ‘an attempt to exert pressure on Ukraine and its allies’.
“This is pressure. Its first target is Ukraine – they want us to consent to the conditions set by Russia, but it also concerns Europe and the USA. ‘Look, I won’t stop until you make terms with me’, this pressure implies,” he stressed.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia of sending 9,000 troops to back separatist rebels in the east of his country.
Russian troops were backed by a range of heavy weapons, including 500 tanks, heavy artillery and armored vehicles, he said, adding: “If this is not aggression, what is aggression?”
In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news briefing that the Western alliance had monitored Russian troops in Ukraine for several months and seen an increase lately in numbers of tanks, artillery pieces and other heavy equipment.
He also called on Russia to pull their troops ouat and to comply with a peace plan agreed in Minsk last September between Ukraine, Russia and pro-Russian separatist leaders to end the conflict.
The Minsk plan provides for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of foreign fighters and military equipment from Ukraine. But the ceasefire has been very shaky from the start and hundreds of people have died since September in clashes Kyiv says have involved regular Russian troops.
