NATO says Russian forces ‘still inside Ukraine’

VILNIUS, Lithuania – NATO’s top military commander on Saturday, September 20, said Russian forces were still operating in Ukraine and that a ceasefire was not working, but he expressed hope a new peace plan could bring progress.

“As to Russian forces on the ground, yes, they are still inside Ukraine,” US General Philip Breedlove told reporters in Lithuania, without providing precise numbers.

He said a two-week-old ceasefire was “still there in name, but what is happening on the ground is quite a different story. We hope that this will change.”

“The fluidity of movement of Russian forces and Russian-backed forces back and forth across that border makes it almost impossible to understand the numbers,” he said in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius, where NATO military chiefs were meeting this weekend to discuss the alliance’s eastern flank and ties with Russia.

Breedlove added that he was hopeful about a 9-point peace plan agreed in marathon overnight talks in the Belarussian capital Minsk, which calls on Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian militias to pull back their troops from a demilitarized zone in eastern Ukraine.

“We heard today of some possible new agreements… and it is our sincere hope and desire that… the two combatants can come to agreement to again get to a ceasefire situation,” he said.

Under the freshly agreed Minsk pact, forces from both sides are required to retreat 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) from current frontlines within 24 hours of the signing of the accord and allow monitors from the OSCE pan-European security organization into the area to make sure the truce holds.

Territory under rebel control would be left open to their administration under a temporary self-rule plan adopted by lawmakers in Kiev on Tuesday, September 16.

The pact – also signed by Moscow’s ambassador to Kiev and the self-proclaimed “prime ministers” of the rebel-run regions of Donetsk and Lugansk – aims to shore up a ceasefire deal signed on September 5. – Rappler.com