Russia says it will withdraw 17,600 troops from its border with Ukraine in the Rostov region, where they had been temporarily based "for ilitary exercises," said Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov late on Oct. 11.
Putin had a meeting with Russian Defense Minister
Sergei Shoigu after a session with the permanent members of Defense Council of
Russian Federation. “As a result of the report, Putin instructed to proceed with
the return of troops to their standing stations,” Peskov said.
Putin claimed that the planned removal of Russian
troops was due to completion a one-year training at a southern region
that borders east Ukraine, where Russian-backed insurgents have been battling
government troops since April. Russia has been accused of actually supplying
both troops in weapons to support the insurgents in Eastern Ukraine – the
claims it has denied.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to meet with
Russian counterpart in Asia-Europe summit in Milan on Oct. 16-17. Presumable
topics are a peace plan for eastern Ukraine and an ongoing natural gas.
Russian opposition politician Borys Nemtsov already
called Putin’s decision “the end of Novorossiya project,” referring to the idea
of creating a pro-Russian state in southeastern Ukraine.
“(Putin) wanted Novorossiya from Donetsk to Odesa,
and, instead, got lesser parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. He wanted a
surface pathway to Crimea through Mariupol. He insteads got Russian people building
trenches in Mariupol not to let in the invader,” Nemstsov says. “He wanted it
done like in Crimea – without a single shot – and he got 4,000 casualties on both
sides.”
It remains to be seen, however, just how willing
Russia will be on living up to its commitments. Announcement about withdrawing
Russian troops from Ukrainian border hit the news in March and May, but
it both cases it wasn’t supported by factual evidence.
Both Pentagon and NATO
offered their own evidence showing that several thousand combat troops and hundreds of
tanks and armored vehicles remained in eastern Ukraine to support the pro-Russian
separatists fighting the Ukrainian army.
Kyiv Post staff writer Julia
Kukoba can be reached at [email protected].
