Russian army began to withdraw from border areas of Ukraine where its troops had been massed for weeks, causing a resurgence of international tensions, announced Friday the Defense Ministry, quoted by Russian agencies. “Currently, our military units and groups are marching towards railway loading stations and airfields, loading landing ships, railway platforms and military cargo planes,” the ministry said, quoted by Ria Novosti.
According to the same source, quoted by the Interfax agency, this withdrawal began in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, the day after exercises which brought together some 10,000 men in this region. “On April 23, the forces of the Southern Military District and the airborne forces participating in the surprise verification maneuvers began to return to their permanent locations,” according to the ministry.
No “threatening” maneuvers
Present at the exercises in Crimea on Thursday, the Minister of Defense, Sergei Choïgou, announced the withdrawal from April 23 until the 1is May tens of thousands of troops deployed in Crimea and western Russia in what he called surprise exercises to check the readiness of Russian forces. The presence of this large number of soldiers near Ukraine, which has been fighting pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country since 2014, has fueled tensions between Moscow, Kiev and the West in recent weeks.
Ukraine suspected Moscow of planning an invasion. Russia denied, assuring that its maneuvers were not “threatening”, but a response to NATO exercises in Europe and Ukrainian provocations. The conflict between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists has claimed dozens of lives since January when a long truce was observed in the second half of 2020. Since its beginning in 2014, more than 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
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