Russian President Vladimir Putin has broken his promise to withdraw troops from the border with Ukraine, where there are currently 39,000 soldiers with weapons and military equipment, Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the UN Yuriy Serheyev has said.
“Many times we have heard here (at the UN Security Council) from Moscow about its readiness to pull its troops away from the border with Ukraine. Today, we have evidence that Ukraine is surrounded by a considerable number of troops,” Serheyev said at a special meeting of the UN Security Council.
The ambassador demanded that Russia should explain why it keeps 200 tanks, 1,600 vehicles, 640 artillery pieces, 191 aircraft, and 121 combat helicopters on the borders with Ukraine. “Neither Ukraine, nor the OSCE have received any explanation,” he said.
He recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally promised three or four times to the international community to withdraw Russian troops from the border with Ukraine from the sites of the “military drills” to the place of their permanent deployment, but he did not fulfill them. “I want to understand why, despite all the promises, a large number of weaponry and military – about 39,000 soldiers are on the border with Ukraine? It’s a matter of trust, what should we believe?” Serheyev said.
The U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Samantha Power, for her part, said at the UN Security Council’s meeting that deliveries of Russian military hardware to the east of Ukraine had increased.
Russia has been sending its military hardware and so-called humanitarian convoys, which have not given the international monitoring mission an opportunity to check the cargo, Power said.
