Ukraine: NATO says it has no proof of Russian withdrawal | Photo credits: AP/SIPA
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO has not seen any de-escalation on Ukraine’s borders and is able to prove the absence of a Russian military withdrawal from the border of the two countries, despite Moscow’s announcements, a Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday.
“The reality of a Russian withdrawal remains to be demonstrated,” he told reporters before the start of a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers at NATO headquarters. , in Brussels.
“What we are seeing is an increase in the number of troops deployed and new troops on the way,” he said.
Jens Stoltenberg later said at the meeting that NATO was able to prove using satellite images that there was no Russian military withdrawal from the Ukrainian border.
“The intelligence we share is also in fact confirmed by public sources, with satellite images from commercial satellites,” he said, describing Russian troop movements as routine, which Moscow presented as a withdrawal.
Kiev also said it had not seen any withdrawal of the Russian army. In an interview with Reuters, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksi Reznikov said the country’s intelligence services had no evidence that the Russian military was actually withdrawing from the border.
(Report Robin Emmott, Sabine Siebold and Phil Stewart; French version Myriam Rivet and Jean Terzian, edited by Blandine Hénault and Bertrand Boucey)