Russia sees U.S. military threat, warns Ukraine

MOSCOW -- Russia's Foreign Ministry on Thursday called the arrival of U.S. military trainers in western Ukraine a "provocation" and warned Ukrainians that they should rethink the consequences of hosting the Western forces.

"U.S.-Ukrainian military drills in the western Ukrainian Lviv region threaten Russia's security," ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement carried by the official Tass news agency.

The Pentagon had previously announced that as many as 300 soldiers from the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Italy, would be sent to the Lviv region on Ukraine's western border to train Ukrainian servicemen.

Lukashevich said the American forces who arrived Thursday for their seven-month mission intended to teach Ukrainian soldiers "how to use overseas military equipment." He added that discussion continues in the United States about sending arms to the Ukrainian government as well as the instructors.

"It is evident that they are not trying to bring peace to the country," Lukashevich said of Washington's military aid to Ukraine, which Moscow officials and state-controlled media portray as an anti-Russia collaboration.

"Kiev authorities and all the Ukrainian people should think about the possible consequences of such steps," Lukashevich warned. "It is impossible to extinguish the fire of a civil war by weapons. This can be done only through a political dialogue between the warring parties."

The Russian government statements on the training mission put further pressure on an already shaky cease-fire and weapons pullback underway after a Feb. 12 agreement in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus.

The U.S.-Russian relationship, already at its lowest point since the end of the Cold War, could be significantly damaged if "the citizens of Donbass start being killed with the use of the U.S. weapons," the Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying by Tass.

Donbass is the name of the industrial and mining region that spans the Don River basin near the Ukrainian-Russian border where Moscow-backed separatists have seized territory and proclaimed autonomous "people's republics."

No decision has been made in Washington on sending lethal aid to Ukraine, but House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and a group of top Democrats and Republicans stepped up the pressure on President Barack Obama on Thursday.

In a letter to the president, the 11 lawmakers wrote that Russia's actions are more than an attack on Ukraine's sovereignty, calling them a "grotesque violation of international law, a challenge to the West and an assault on the international order established at such great cost in the wake of World War II."

The group said the Minsk agreement, which led to last month's cease-fire, has only consolidated Russian and separatists' gains, and "we urge you to quickly approve additional efforts to support Ukraine's efforts to defend its sovereign territory, including through the transfer of lethal defense weapons systems to the Ukrainian military."

Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is among senior Obama administration figures who also are pushing for more effective military aid to Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin denies arming rebels in the war in eastern Ukraine, which has killed more than 6,000 people since the fighting broke out 11 months ago after Russia's seizure and annexation of Ukraine's Crimea territory.

Putin has cast last year's ouster of Kremlin-allied Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych as a U.S.-inspired coup d'etat that brought pro-European and pro-NATO officials to power in Ukrainian elections last year. Putin has vehemently opposed NATO membership for Ukraine and lashed out at Western military support of any kind for his nation's southwestern neighbor.

NATO's top U.S. civilian official, Alexander Vershbow, said Thursday that "an angry, revisionist Russia" was stopping at little to re-establish its clout in Europe, including redrawing "borders by force to achieve its goals."

Vershbow, the alliance's deputy secretary-general, said Putin's "aim seems to be to turn Ukraine into a failed state and to suppress and discredit alternative voices in Russia, so as to prevent a Russian 'Maidan,'" referring to the Ukraine uprising that ousted Yanukovych.

Vershbow also said that under Putin, Russia has developed "a new form of 'hybrid warfare,' combining military intimidation, disguised intervention, the covert supply of weapons and weapon systems, economic blackmail, diplomatic duplicity and media manipulation, with outright disinformation."

In Moscow, Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov blasted the West for trying to enforce its will on others. He condemned NATO's decision to create command and control centers in the Baltic states and three other eastern allies, and to upgrade a headquarters unit in Poland -- calling those moves a clear signal that the alliance views Russia much as it once did the Soviet Union.

Information for this article was contributed by Carol J. Williams of Los Angeles Times and by Raf Casert, Vladimir Isachenkov and Donna Cassata of The Associated Press.

A Section on 03/06/2015

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