Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Aug. 11 put Ukraine’s armed forces on high alert and “full combat readiness” near Russian-occupied Crimea and the war zone in the Donbas.
The reaction came in response to Russia’s escalation of its three-year war against Ukraine in recent weeks, with the Kremlin on Aug. 10 alleging that “Ukrainian saboteurs” had been arrested before they could carry out terroristic acts on Ukraine’s occupied peninsula. Russia claimed that two of its soldiers were klled in the confrontation.
Ukrainian authorities dismissed the claims as fabrications while Russian President Vladimir Putin provided no evidence to back up his claims. “Our special forces prevented terrorist attacks organized by Ukrainian Defense Ministry — the situation is pretty disturbing,” Putin said during a news conference in Moscow.
Putin also went on to denigrate Ukraine’s leaders, calling them corrupt, illegitimate and uninterested in peace. The Kremlin leader said that it’s pointless to continue the four-way talks among Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine – the Normandy format – under current circumstances.
“In such an environment it is useless, I think, to take part in the Normandy format negotiations planned to be held in China in September,” he said.
Russia’s Federal Security Service claimed on its official website on Aug. 10 to have prevented several terrorist attacks planned by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Intelligence Department. It said the attacks were intended to destabilize the situation in Crimea ahead of the elections to Russia’s State Duma in September.
The Ukrainian special forces, according to the FSB, were planning to attack important infrastructure objects on the peninsula.
“I want to address to our U.S. and European partners. It is obvious now that Kyiv authorities no longer want to negotiate. They have chosen terror instead,” Putin said. “The recent assassination attempt on the head of Luhansk People’s Republic Ihor Plotnitskiy is also considered a terror attack. And now the intrusion attempt in Crimea. As you know, two Russian officers were killed. And we won’t ignore this. We will take some additional security steps.”
Provocations
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the claims as more provocations by the Kremlin.
“With this move, the Kremlin is trying to excuse its annexation of Crimea and its further acts of aggression against Ukraine,” read an official statement published on the Foreign Ministry’s website on Aug. 10. “Ukraine vigorously condemns terrorism, and is deeply concerned by the increasing Russian military presence concentrated in Crimea, the Donbas and along the Russian-Ukrainian border. The situation is highly dangerous not only for Ukraine’s security, but for the security of the whole region.”
The Foreign Ministry said it was appealing to the international community not to allow Russian to launch a new round of aggression against Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry also denied that its Intelligence Department had been involved in any incidents in Crimea, stating that the Russian FSB’s claims were an attempt to scare Crimean citizens and distract their attention from the fact that the peninsula is turning into a military base.
Ukrainian ‘spies’
In its report, the FSB claimed a group of Ukrainian saboteurs had been arrested near the north Crimean town of Armyansk near mainland Ukraine. During the arrest, one FSB officer was shot dead, the FSB claimed. It also claimed it had found 20 improvised bombs made by the group.
The FSB said Ukrainian forces had made another attempt to cross into Crimea on Aug. 8, during which a Russian army officer had been shot dead. It said several Russian and Ukrainian citizens had been arrested and that a “Ukrainian Defense Ministry spy network” had been neutralized.
The FSB also said it had detained Ukrainian citizen Yevgen Panov from Zaporizhzhya Oblast, a former volunteer fighter for Ukraine in the Donbas, whom it said was the organizer of the spy network.
The FSB showed footage of Panov, who was handcuffed and appeared to have cuts and bruises on his face. The FSB said Panov had “already given statements of confession.”
Counter claims
Meanwhile, Igor Kotelianets, Panov’s brother, wrote on Facebook on Aug. 10 that Panov had been kidnapped by the Russian security services in Zaporizhzhya Oblast and illegally taken to Crimea.
“There’s no other way he could get there,” wrote Kotelianets.
In an interview with the Ukrainian news outlet censor.net, Kotelianets said his brother and his wife lived in the city of Energodar in Zaporizhzhya Oblast. On Aug. 6, Panov left home to meet with friends, after which he was planning to go to Zaporizhzhya military hospital for a rehabilitation course.
“He was dismissed from the army in September 2015, so he couldn’t be the organizer of any military operations,” said Kotelianets. “For a year he was working as a driver at a nuclear power plant and helping the army as a volunteer. He was helping war veterans adapt to civilian life.”
According to Kotelianets, Panov called his wife on Aug. 7 to say everything was fine and that he would be home on Aug. 8, but after that he disappeared. On Aug. 10 his relatives saw on the news that Panov was under arrest in Crimea.
The Ukrainian police say they have already started an investigation into Panov’s kidnapping.
The FSB said that after the alleged incidents, Russia “had been forced to move special army forces to the border of Crimea and Ukraine in order to strengthen the border guards.”
However, there were widespread reports in social media prior to at least one of the alleged border incidents that large amounts of Russian military hardware was being moved around Crimea.
Closed borders
The present tension had been building for days. A couple of days before Putin’s sensational claims the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service reported closing all three Russian checkpoints on the border with Crimea.
Oleh Slobodyan, the spokesperson of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, on Aug. 9 wrote on Facebook that Russian border guards at the checkpoints near the border towns of Chaplynka and Chongar were only letting Russians and Crimean citizens with Russian passports cross into Crimea. No one was being allowed to leave the peninsula, Slobodyan said.
Slobodyan also said Ukraine’s Border Guards had observed a lot of activity by Russian military forces near the border.
“We observed Mi-8 military helicopters six times overnight. And somebody tried to illuminate the positions of Ukrainian servicemen with a searchlight,” wrote Slobodyan.
But by Aug. 11 all of the checkpoints on the border had reopened.
Political analyst Taras Berezovets, writing on Facebook on Aug. 9, compared the alleged incident in Crimea to one in 1999, when the FSB was allegedly caught planting a bomb in a residential building in Ryazan. The incident occurred just before Putin was elected president, and launched the Second Chechen War in Russia.
U. S Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt wrote on Twitter on Aug. 11 that the U.S. government had seen nothing so far to corroborate Russian allegations of a “Crimea incursion,” and that Ukraine has strongly denied the claims.
“Russia has a record of frequently levying false accusations at Ukraine to deflect attention from its own illegal actions,” Pyatt wrote.
Putin goes on attack
Putin, who has long denigrated the idea that Ukraine is a separate nation, reverted to one of his favorite themes on Aug. 10: That Ukraine’s authorities are illegimate because of the popular EuroMaidan Revolution that prompted Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych to flee power on Feb. 22, 2014.
Putin said Ukraine’s “attempt to provoke a burst of violence, to provoke conflict—it’s nothing but a wish to divert the attention of the public of the country away from those who have seized power in Kyiv, who continue to hold it, and who continue to rob their own people, so as to further lengthen the hold on power, and to create conditions for the further plunder of its citizens. But this is a futile attempt. This is a very dangerous game.
“Of course, we will do everything to ensure the safety of infrastructure, and of our citizens,” Putin said. He used similar remarks to justify Russia’s military invasion of Crimea in 2014 and incursions into the Russian-controlled eastern Donbas region of Ukraine.
