Russia has started sending more of its troops and military hardware to territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions not controlled by Kyiv, which suggests that Russia is preparing military aggression against Ukraine and an occupation of its territory, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has said.
“Russia is continuing to concentrate military units near the border with Ukraine, and intensification of aerial reconnaissance of Ukrainian military positions has been registered. In fact, we are facing the continuation of military aggression against Ukraine and actual preparations for the occupation of our state’s sovereign territory,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yevhen Perebyinis said at a press conference in Kyiv on Nov. 11.
Russian officials keep on denying obvious facts of its armed forces’ presence in Donbas, which has become “a usual practice for Russia and a kind of trademark of the hybrid war that it has started against Ukraine,” he said.
“The leadership of this country hasn’t yet explained to the world and its citizens, why it first denied the part of the Russian military in the annexation of Crimea, but than matter-of-factly recognized that it was deliberately deceiving the whole of the international community,” Perebyinis said.
Both Ukraine’s special services and special services of its partners have enough facts of presence of Russian troops in Ukraine, and this information is also available in social media, he said.
“The fact that Russia removes insignia from its hardware and troops should not mislead anyone. These are also signs of a hybrid war invented by Russia, which enables it to talk cynically about the absence of proof,” Perebyinis said.
Perebyinis also suggested that it would be right to stop using the phrase ‘humanitarian convoy’ to describe Russian vehicles entering Ukrainian territory. “No humanitarian convoys exist,” he said.
Russia has been sending several convoys carrying weapons and military hardware to Ukraine every day, and the so-called humanitarian convoys are just a method of supporting military units acting against government forces in eastern Ukraine, he said.
