NATO Urges Intact Ukraine as Russia Holds Military Drill
By James G. Neuger Feb 26, 2014 12:33 PM ET
NATO made a plea for keeping post-revolutionary Ukraine in one piece as tensions mounted in the Crimea region and the Kremlin ordered a test of combat readiness of nearby Russian military units.
Defense ministers of the 28-nation U.S.-led military alliance called for a “sovereign, independent and stable” Ukraine, emphasizing the “principle of inviolability of frontiers.” North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the warning was addressed “to whom it may concern.”
Allied defense ministers issued the statement at a meeting in Brussels today after Interfax reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the military drills involving around 150,000 troops in Russia’s central and western military districts, including areas bordering Ukraine.
“NATO is trying to send a very strong message that Russia should be very careful and not intervene in Ukraine,” Jan Techau, head of the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment and a former research adviser at the NATO Defense College in Rome, said in a phone interview. “It’s telling the Russians that there will be a very high price if they do intervene. It’s a unified Western message.”
Scuffles between Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Russian demonstrators in the Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that was part of Russia until 1954 and remains home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, underscored the unpredictable outcome of the popular uprising that swept away Ukraine’s president last week.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-26/nato-urges-intact-ukraine-as-russia-holds-military-drill.html