PRESS RELEASE

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Russian Foreign Ministry Says U.S. Troops in Ukraine Violate Minsk II Accord

April 17, 2015 (EIRNS)—With the U.S. announcement that 290 American troops are arriving in Ukraine today to train the Ukrainian Army, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Alexander Lukashevich made a statement reported by TASS, the Russian news agency.

“As far as I know, the training program includes drilling skills in handling weapons and hardware of Western standards,” Lukashevich said. “It can be considered as the first step towards supplies of state-of-the-art American weapons the Kiev party of war is craving for so much. Washington’s encouraging attitude towards its revanchist plans is fraught with another surge of violence and bloodshed in our neighbouring country.”

“Reports about the arrival of 290 servicemen of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade [deployed in Italy’s Vic to the Yavorovsky testing ground in Ukraine’s Lvov region cannot but cause serious concern,” he said. “It is evident that American soldiers in Ukraine will not bring peace to it.”

He also pointed out that

“These actions run counter to the agreements reached in Minsk on February 12 and signed by the Kiev authorities supported, as far as we understand, by Washington.”

Making a stern criticism, he added,

“So, it is a flagrant violation of liabilities Kiev has undertaken, while the Obama administration, which calls for a peace settlement of the Ukrainian crisis in word, is seeking to frustrate the Minsk agreements in fact.”

Earlier, a statement from the Kremlin by Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on its website also criticized the American troop deployment, reported TASS.

“The presence of foreign instructors in Ukraine, where an internal conflict remains unresolved in southeast and where problems arise with the implementation of the Minsk peace agreement, does not help in settling the conflict and producing an environment beneficial for it,” Peskov said. “On the contrary, it destabilizes the situation.”