Moscow/Kyiv: Russia said more of its forces surrounding Ukraine were withdrawing on Wednesday but NATO urged Moscow to prove it was pulling back, saying there were signs that more troops were on the way.
In Ukraine, where people raised flags and played the national anthem to show unity against fears of an invasion, the defence ministry said a cyber attack was into its second day. Russia said it had nothing to do with that.
The Russian defence ministry said its forces were pulling back after completing exercises in the southern and western military districts near Ukraine.
It published video that it said showed tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and self-propelled artillery units leaving the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said a pullout would be welcome but that moving troops about did not confirm it.
“It remains to be seen whether there is a Russian withdrawal … What we see is that they have increased the number of troops, and more troops are on the way,” he told reporters at the start of a two-day meeting of NATO defence ministers at the alliance s headquarters in Brussels.
The Kremlin said NATO s assessment was wrong. Moscow s ambassador to Ireland said forces in western Russia would be back to their normal positions within three to four weeks.
The deployment in the Crimean peninsula was part of a huge build-up of Russian forces to the north, east and south of Ukraine since November that had prompted London and Washington to warn in recent days that a Russian invasion looked imminent.
Russia mocked those warnings as hysterical war propaganda when it announced on Tuesday that some units were starting to return to base after completing exercises.
China, which has cultivated closer ties with Russia as both countries have come under increasing criticism from the West, accused the United States of “playing up the threat of warfare and creating tension”.
Military analysts say a key indicator of a significant pullback will be whether field hospitals and fuel stores are dismantled and units from Russia s far east, which are taking part in huge exercises in Belarus this week, return to their bases thousands of miles away. AFP
