KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko put his troops on the border with Crimea and in the country's eastern regions on "high alert" after warning that Russia is seeking to reignite conflict in the disputed territories.
The command came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukrainian agents had engaged in "terror tactics" on the Black Sea peninsula, which he seized in 2014. Putin vowed to respond with "very serious" measures, touching off the worst diplomatic standoff between the two countries since a truce signed last year in Belarus eased fighting in the separatist conflict.
"There may be escalation in eastern Ukraine, and that is very dangerous," Alexei Makarkin, deputy head of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow, said by phone Thursday. "The events are developing according to a pretty negative scenario. Neither side has any trust in the other."
The confrontation coincided with a surge in violence in Ukraine's eastern Donbas territories and torpedoed plans to revive four-way peace talks at the September Group of 20 meeting in China, with Putin reversing earlier support and calling the negotiations "pointless." The flare-up came after efforts by Putin to repair ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that frayed after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter on the Syrian border last year.
Putin discussed with his Security Council bolstering defenses on the peninsula, according to the Kremlin news service. On Wednesday, he said the Federal Security Service that's the main successor of the Soviet-era KGB, reported that Ukrainian intelligence officers killed two Russian servicemen during a covert operation in Crimea. He added that he "certainly won't let such things pass by."
Poroshenko dismissed Putin's accusations as "fiction" that could be an "excuse for further military threats" by Russia. He ordered troops to go on high alert and urged police to step up security to prevent potential terrorist attacks, according to a statement posted on his website.
The Russian Foreign Ministry followed up Thursday by warning that if Poroshenko had been involved in "criminal decisions to stage armed provocations" in Crimea, "he could claim the role of the gravedigger of the Minsk process."
"And if he had been unaware of these decisions, it's even worse," it said.
Oleksandr Turchynov, chairman of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, meanwhile ordered the Foreign Ministry to notify the United Nations of recent events and to organize phone calls with Putin, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, French President Francois Hollande, European Union President Donald Tusk and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Ukraine has accused its former fellow Soviet republic of funneling cash, weapons and fighters to the separatists who have seized control of much of its easternmost regions in a conflict that the U.N. estimates has killed at least 9,500 people.
One soldier was killed, and four were wounded over the past 24 hours, Ukraine military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said Thursday. He said Russia was engaging in "yet another step in the hybrid war against Ukraine."
The U.S. government has seen no evidence that corroborates Russian allegations of a "Crimea incursion," Washington's ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, said on Twitter. He added that Russia has a record of levying false accusations at Ukraine to deflect from its own "illegal" actions and that the U.S. would maintain its Crimea-related sanctions against Russia until it returns the peninsula to Kiev's control.
Western countries have refused to recognize Russia's takeover of Crimea and have imposed sanctions that have helped force the world's biggest energy-exporting economy into recession.
Information for this article was contributed by Nataliya Vasilyeva of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/12/2016