Russia Warns of ‘Consequences’ After Deaths as Ukraine on Alert
Source: Bloomberg
Russia said the deaths of its servicemen in Crimea wouldn’t go “without consequences” and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko put his troops near the peninsula and in the country’s easternmost regions on “high alert,” warning that Vladimir Putin is seeking to reignite the conflict in the disputed territories.
The Foreign Ministry in Moscow ratcheted up the threat of retaliation a day after the Russian president vowed to respond with “very serious” measures and said Ukrainian agents had engaged in “terror” tactics on the Black Sea peninsula, which he seized in 2014. Poroshenko dismissed the accusations as “fiction” that could be an “excuse for further military threats” by Russia. He ordered the armed forces, national guard and border troops to go on high alert Thursday and urged police to step up security to prevent potential terrorist attacks, according to a statement on his website.
The worst diplomatic standoff between the two countries since a truce signed last year raised alarm in foreign capitals and reverberated across markets. The confrontation coincided with a surge in violence in Ukraine’s eastern territories, where government troops have been locked in a struggle against pro-Russian separatists, and torpedoed plans to revive four-way peace talks at the September G-20 meeting in China, with Putin reversing earlier support and calling the negotiations “pointless.”
“There may be escalation in eastern Ukraine and that is very dangerous,” Alexei Makarkin, deputy head of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies, said by phone. “The events are developing according to a pretty negative scenario. Neither side has any trust in the other.”
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-11/russia-warns-of-consequences-after-deaths-as-ukraine-on-alert
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