BALTINORE, Maryland May 19, 2014 - Even as fighting in Slovyansk and other places continued unabated, Russian Strongman Vladimir Putin promised today to withdrawl his troops from the Ukranian Border. Some 40,000 troops have been staging on that border since March, and they are backed by massive amounts of heavy artillery, fighter jets, attack helicopters, provisions, armored personnel carriers and other necessities for a mobile and prolonged attack. Plus, Putin has promised on many occassions in recent weeks to draw down or remove those troops, but it has never happened.
The AP, with the report originating at their Moscow bureau, said that Putin did not promise the move in a conversation with a foreign leader, as has happened recently, but instead issued the order directly to military commanders. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, was told specifically to pull back forces that were to be involved in large-scale spring drills. Such an order would be directly verifiable by the West through satellite surveilance and on-site observation by aircraft.
Putin ordered the troops to bivouac on the Ukraine border at about the same time he invaded Crimea. Troops have entered Ukraine on a variety of undercover assignments, using Putin's method of wearing their uniforms but with all insignia's identifying them as Russian removed. It hasn't fooled anyone and one wonders what his motive was. The soldiers make no effort to disguise their military training and are easy to distinguish from actual separatist ethnic Russians living in Eastern Ukraine. However, having the "marked" troops removed from the border would be a movement in the right direction unless it is part of some other ruse Putin plans to pull. And, as NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reiterated on Monday, there has been no sign of any Russian pull-out along the Ukraine border.
Meanwhile, fighting continues in Eastern Ukraine, although in sporadic episodes. There was a gunbattle near Slovyansk on Sunday. According to the AP, Pro-Russian insurgents fired on a Ukrainian army check-point near a television tower outside of Slovyansk, killing one soldier and wounding three, Ukraine's defense ministry said.
AP journalists reported that they also witnessed mortar fire hitting the village of Andriyivka, just outside Slovyansk. While it was impossible to confirm who fired the mortars, the shelling appeared to come from the Ukrainian government troops' positions, damaging a gas main running across a field and onto local residents' lands. The pipeline caught fire, but no residents were hurt.
Slovyansk has been the epicenter of fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian insurgents, who have seized government buildings across the east.
In Donetsk, the capital of one of the regions that pro-Russian insurgents declared independent last week, masked gunmen seized the office of the local branch of Ukrainian Railways. The company told the Associated Press the attackers disrupted the freight train traffic, leaving about 4,000 train cars stranded in the industrial region.
The attackers drove out the chief of the Donetsk branch of Ukrainian Railways and installed their own man, the AP reported. His name was said to be Oleksandr Vatula. He said outside the building that he is representing the Donetsk People's Republic and pledged to restore the train traffic.
Ukraine's central government has urged rebels to lay down arms and sit down for talks, but they say they are only prepared to discuss the withdrawal of government troops.
Amid the tensions, Ukraine and Russia traded accusations over two Russian journalists, who were arrested by Ukrainian forces near Slovyansk on Sunday.
The Ukrainian military said the two men, who had press accreditation with Life News, a Kremlin-connected TV channel, were with pro-Russian insurgents and were filming preparations for an attack outside Slovyansk. Russia has protested the arrest and asked the OSCE to assist their release.
Alexander Zemlianichhenko in Slovyansk, Ukraine, Nataliya Vasilyeva in Kiev, Yuras Karmanau in Donetsk and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels contributed to this report for the AP.
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