US general paints girm picture of relation with Russia

WASHINGTON
 This is a great achievement
 The top US commander for Nato painted on Monday an increasingly grim picture of the West’s deteriorating relationship with Russia, saying Moscow is effectively working to shift its border westward into Ukraine.

Gen. Philip Breed love said that Moscow’s actions are forcing the West to beef up its military capabilities, and Russia is discussing plans to put aircraft in Ukraine’s Crimea region that have a full range of capabilities, including possibly tactical nuclear weapons.
He added, however, that so far he has seen no indications that Russia is deploying such weapons to Crimea.

“Hybrid war is what we are coming to call what Russia has done clearly in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine,” Breedlove told a small group of Pentagon reporters, saying that Moscow has brought military, political and economic pressure on Ukraine, eroding the border and shifting it toward a line of demarcation further west.

“I’m concerned that the conditions are there that could create a frozen conflict,” one that creates a new reality. Breedlove’s comments come a day after contentious elections in eastern Ukraine where separatists voted for new leaders. The elections have been denounced as illegal by the US and EU, saying they undermined the two-month ceasefire agreement. That ceasefire, however, has been routinely violated, with fights between government and separatist forces raging daily in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Breedlove, the supreme allied commander for Nato, said there are about 250 to 300 Russian troops in Ukraine training and equipping the Russian-backed separatists, and seven battalion task groups along the border. Some of those troops moved closer to the border as the election approached, and officials are now waiting to see if they fall back. He added that Russian truck convoys are routinely crossing the border, including one that was poised to enter Ukraine Sunday.

He said he’s seen published reports that the convoy had crossed into Ukraine, but couldn’t confirm them. “We have seen a general trend towards a hardening of this line of demarcation and much more softening of the actual Ukraine-Russia border,” said Breedlove, adding that the US and other Nato allies are readjusting their approaches to Russia, that recognise Moscow is no longer a partner.

At the same time, Russian has inflamed tensions with the West by conducting a number of recent military flights over the Black, Baltic and North Seas and the Atlantic Ocean that have become more provocative in recent days. Officials have said the warplanes have been flying in more complex formations and going deeper south.

“They’re messaging us,” said Breedlove, “that they are a great power and that they have the ability to exert these kinds of influences in our thinking. “Ukraine is not a Nato member, and so is not covered under its defence umbrella, but it has expressed interest in joining. Three other former Soviet republics have joined the alliance since the end of the Cold War, as well as the former Soviet satellite states of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.