Russians resume buildup near Ukraine

BRUSSELS: Russia has resumed a military buildup near Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rassmussen said Thursday, calling it “a very regrettable step backward.”
“I can confirm that we now see a new Russian military build-up — at least a few thousand more Russian troops deployed to the Ukrainian border, and we see troop maneuvers in the neighborhood of Ukraine,” Rassmussen said in London.
“If they’re deployed to seal the border and stop the flow of weapons and fighters that would be a positive step. But that’s not what we’re seeing.”
Instead, the NATO chief said, Russia appears bent on using it military to intimidate Ukraine further. “I consider this a very regrettable step backwards and it seems that Russia keeps the option to intervene further,” Rasmussen said. “So the international community would have to respond firmly if Russia were to intervene further. That would imply deeper sanctions which would have a negative impact on Russia.”
NATO estimated at one point there were up to 40,000 Russian forces deployed near the border with Ukraine, but reported last month that many of the soldiers and their equipment had been pulled back.
Meanwhile, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said that it has made contact with two teams of four observers who were kidnapped in eastern Ukraine three weeks ago and that they are all “unharmed.”
“All the information indicates that all members in both teams are unharmed,” OSCE spokeswoman Natacha Rajakovic said.
“We will not say how or when this contact was established so as not to jeopardize their safety. We are directing our efforts through different channels to get access and establish contact with those holding our colleagues,” she said.
“We cannot comment about the identity of those detaining them, nor statements made by any groups or individuals that are reported by media.”
The two teams were seized in late May, one by armed men at a roadblock in the restive eastern Ukrainian region of Lugansk and the other in neighboring Donetsk.
The self-proclaimed “people’s mayor” of the rebel stronghold of Slavyansk said at the time that the OSCE team seized in Donetsk was being held on suspicions of spying.
Another pro-Russian commander from the little-known Southeastern Front claimed in a statement issued to the Interfax news agency that his men had detained the team in Lugansk.