Military tensions in Eastern Europe escalated yesterday, with the US and Denmark sending fighter jets to bases in Latvia and Lithuania, a move that points to increased Western countries' responsiveness in the region amid growing tensions on the Ukraine-Russia border.
NATO has sought to make clear that the transfer of F-15 and F-16 fighter jets to bases in the Baltic states is part of a permanent alliance of the United States. Ukraine.
Tense atmosphere
Russia's media, on the other hand, reported that a number of senior members of the ruling party had asked President Putin to send weapons, artillery and even armored forces to help pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also responded to US President Joe Biden's statement that he would impose personal sanctions on Putin in the event of an invasion of Ukraine. We will have a declaration of severance of diplomatic relations. "
The Russian army is training, Photo: AP
At the same time, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced that his country had forwarded a written reply to Russia regarding Moscow's demands in the context of the crisis resolution negotiations.
Blinkan said in a statement from the Secretary of State that the United States' response leaves "several options for the progress of negotiations for Russia."
Blinkan did not elaborate on the options offered by the United States to Moscow but Russia's demands to prevent Ukraine's future accession to NATO and the withdrawal of Allied forces from Eastern European countries were previously defined as impossible by Washington officials.
Meanwhile, heavy tension was felt in the border area between Russia and Ukraine.
Large forces of the Ukrainian army, including trucks, APCs and tanks, were seen on the main roads in areas near the territories held by pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk districts.
In the city of Mariupol itself, which was the scene of heavy bloody battles during the previous war between the separatists and the Ukrainian army, the atmosphere is tense.
"I have a family in the West. They asked me to come and be with them until all this passes, but I am committed to my job and it seems to me wrong to run away every time we are threatened," says Olksey, a gas station worker in the city center.
The commander of the city police, Mikhailo Vershinin, told Israel Today that his men had been instructed to prepare for a Russian provocation attack, aimed at attracting Ukraine to a response that would be a pretext for war.
"We have asked the government for automatic weapons. We are operating under the constitution of a democratic state, and can not make preventive arrests of anyone we suspect, but we must be prepared," he said.
"We are not soldiers, but if someone thinks of invading here and threatening our citizens - we will sit on his neck until he suffocates," says Vershinin.
In contrast, Petro Andrushchenko, a senior local government official and political activist for democracy and the environment, favors President Zalanski's position and argues that a realistic approach should be taken: "We have made great strides in Ukraine since 2014 and this time we are ready, both militarily and locally."
On the beach of Mariupol, just a few kilometers from the frontier border, members of the "Moss Regiment" of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, a militia assisting the National Army of Ukraine, are training in the snowy landscape.
The defense forces are training
Dima, a resident of the area, explains: "It was the members of the Moss Regiment who stopped the separatists in the previous war. We are just sitting on the crater of a volcano and waiting for an eruption to arrive."
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