NATO urges Russia to 'withdraw all its forces' from eastern Ukraine

[FBaggins]

"I urge Russia to withdraw all its forces from eastern Ukraine, to stop all its support for the separatists and to respect the Minsk agreement," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in the Latvian capital Riga.

...snip...

"Russian forces, artillery and air defence units as well as command and control elements are still active in Ukraine," he said, adding that "there has been a steady buildup of tanks and armoured vehicles across the border from Russia to Ukraine."

...sip...

NATO agreed earlier this month to dramatically boost its defences with six command centres in eastern Europe and a spearhead force of 5,000 troops, to counter what the alliance called Russian aggression in Ukraine. Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain have agreed to take the lead in forming the spearhead rapid reaction force, which would be available to deploy within a week in a crisis.

The six "command and control" centres that will help the deployment of the force will be in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania, with a corps headquarters in Szczecin, Poland

http://news.yahoo.com/nato-urges-russia-withdraw-forces-eastern-ukraine-135941098.html

Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania?

That's sending a message.

[SidDithers]

1. None of that is true...

because James Inhofe is a moron.

Or something.

Sid

[Cha]

11. "None of that is true".. b/c RT says it's not.. and the RT boosters come up with

a whole bag of pretzel logic to bolster Putin's propaganda outlet.

I learned that on DU.

[11 Bravo]

18. Someone with a "marital aid" nicknamed Vlad will be along ...

directly to straighten you out.

Because RT!

[zappaman]

2. Yeah, but the US started this coup and PNAC

Because banana pancakes.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

9. "Because banana pancakes."

I thought it was cookies.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

15. It was actually pampuskhy.

Ukrainian jelly donuts.

They're actually quite delicious.

[pampango]

3. "EU warns Russia as Ukraine ceasefire breaks down"

The EU foreign service said on Wednesday (18 February), “The actions by the Russia-backed separatists in Debaltseve are a clear violation of the ceasefire. The separatists must stop all military activities. Russia and the separatists have to immediately and fully implement the commitments agreed to in Minsk”.

France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia last week in Minsk agreed ceasefire terms which included a cessation of hostilities at midnight on Saturday and a withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of contact from Monday onward.

The fighting mostly stopped in Donetsk, Lugansk, and Mariupol. But Russia-controlled irregulars and Russian forces continued to fire on Ukrainian soldiers in Debaltseve, a railway hub.

“We’ve gotten used to living in an upside-down world with respect to Ukraine. Russia speaks of peace, and then fuels conflict. Russia signs agreements, and then does everything within its power to undermine them.”

https://euobserver.com/foreign/127703

[edhopper]

4. There are no Russian forces

in Ukraine.

RT.

[FBaggins]

5. Well... there ARE Russian forces fighting in Ukraine...

... but they're all "volunteers" who are "on vacation" from the Russian military.

Oh... and there's a new "reserve a tank" program that Moscow is working on as a new employee benefit... so that vacationers don't need to rent RVs and such.

[Igel]

6. The same story keeps getting cited as new.

It's not.

[LittleBlue]

7. The issue of Debaltseve wasn't resolved at Minsk

Debaltseve was already under siege when the Minsk talks began. My understanding is that the separatists had the nationalists surrounded. How can you stop fighting and draw boundary lines during a siege?

As it turned out, the Ukrainians surrendered and were escorted out by rebels. So that issue should be resolved.

[FBaggins]

12. That's certainly Russia's line of argument

How can you stop fighting and draw boundary lines during a siege?

??? Are you really asking how you can have a cease-fire when people are firing at each other?

It isn't just the US/EU who say that the agreement applied to the entire conflict zone... it's also the OSCE (which is the group responsible for monitoring the agreement).

[LittleBlue]

13. Are you familiar with siege warfare?

The Minsk agreement stated that soldiers were to stop fighting, pull back heavy weaponry from the border and draw temporary border lines.

You can't draw a border around a besieged city. Debaltseve's surrounding area was already captured before Minsk. The encircled Ukrainian soldiers ran out of supplies. The road to the city was impassable from shelling and abandoned civilian vehicles, resupply was impossible. They would simply starve to death.

This was the only way it could have ended.

[FBaggins]

16. Certainly... Are you famiiar with West Berlin?

Are you trying to pretend that Russia could have taken West Berlin at any time, regardless of treaty/truce wording because there's a special "Ah... we already had you there!" exception to "cease fire" meaning "cease fire"?

It could have been argued that a final agreement would have required Ukraine's troops to pull out... but not that "cease fire" means "we get to keep shooting at people in territory that we claim to be ours".

[LittleBlue]

17. That was negotiated and resolved with the London Protocol in 1944

This was not. Minsk didn't address this issue. Russia were our allies, we weren't besieged by them.

The failure to address this in Minsk meant this was the only outcome. A siege is still a conflict even if nobody is firing a shot. The Ukrainian troops wanted to surrender because they knew it was over, but Poroshenko and his idiot generals (who stupidly got them in another encirclement to begin with) wanted them to suicidally fight on for political reasons. 6000 dead martyrs were more politically useful compared to the embarrassment of surrender. The troops only fled after they saw the armored forces abandoning Debaltseve.

[NuclearDem]

8. Yeah, but it's all NATO's fault.

For, you know, reasons.

[NuttyFluffers]

10. well this won't feed the spiral of paranoia...

sometimes silence is best.

[Blue_Tires]

14. Russia isn't going to respond to "polite requests"

Putin sees his invasion as a challenge to the West's will...The sooner the West starts seeing it in the same manner, the better...