Nobody should be surprised by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine’s report that it spotted convoys of trucks crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border at night, and not at an official border-crossing point, on Aug. 7.
Despite Kremlin denials, it has long been obvious that it was Russia that started the war in the Donbas, and it is Russia that keeps it going.
The only surprise is that after more than four years of monitoring, this is the first time the OSCE has released video evidence of Russia’s brazen failure to keep its commitments under Minsk — the Kremlin should not be allowing military trucks to cross into Ukraine, according to the agreements it has signed.
Previously, Kremlin-led forces have shot down drones of the type that spotted the clandestine convoy, and it was only recently that the OSCE was able to obtain replacements and restart monitoring with long-range UAVs. Now we know why Russia ordered its proxies to down the drones.
Obviously, the Kremlin does not want there to be proof that it is sending arms, supplies, ammunition and men to fight in Ukraine.
While the drone footage does not show what is in the trucks crossing in and out of Ukraine, it is unlikely to be cartons of baby milk formula or bags of rice. Guns and tank shells do not grow on trees in the Donbas, and neither did they emerge from disused mineshafts in the region, as Kremlin officials have ludicrously suggested. But they are made in Russia.
Moreover, Russian-led forces have never run out of ammunition over more than four years of war. Obviously, the convoys spotted by the OSCE are one of the means by which the Kremlin supplies its forces in Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s denials of its military intervention in Ukraine are increasingly useless. Nobody with an objective view should now be fooled by Kremlin lies that the war in Ukraine is an “internal conflict.”
And it’s time news organizations, politicians and officials of international organizations stop talking about “rebels,” “separatists,” and “civil war” in Ukraine, and acknowledge what is now undeniable — the war in the Donbas is Russia’s war against Ukraine, just as this newspaper has always said it was.
