[ad_1]
The United States has said that Russia intends to increase its troop presence in Belarus by six times by early February, bringing the number of armed forces to 30,000.
Addressing the UN Security Council, the US envoy to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that Russia has already deployed 5,000 troops in Belarus along with short-range ballistic missiles, special forces and anti-aircraft batteries, as well as over 100 thousand troops within its border near Ukraine.
However, Thomas-Greenfield said, the Kremlin is engaging in an “escalation into a pattern of aggression that we have seen repeatedly,” citing the 2008 invasion of Georgia, as well as the occupation and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in year 2014.
She stressed that if Russia further invades Ukraine, “none of us can say that we did not see what was coming.” She said the consequences would be dire.
“Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine has already killed more than 14,000 Ukrainians. Nearly 3 million Ukrainians, half of whom are elderly and children, need food, shelter and life-saving assistance. “As destructive as this situation is, it would be dim in comparison to the humanitarian impact of the full-scale land invasion that Russia is currently planning in Ukraine,” said Thomas-Greenfield.
The U.S. envoy to the UN was referring to Moscow’s continued support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine that began in 2014 and has continued for the past eight years.
The public meeting of the UN Security Council comes at the request of the US and went beyond a Russian procedural attempt to extinguish that little open debate ahead.
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, has accused the United States of making “baseless allegations” about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“The deployment of Russian troops inside our territory has often happened to varying degrees before and has not caused any hysteria,” Nebenzya said.
He further questioned the US estimate of 100,000 troops stationed on Russian territory on the Ukrainian border, saying “this is not the case”. He added that Russia “has never confirmed this figure.”
top channel
[ad_2]
Source link
