Nearly 50,000 Russian soldiers amassed on border with Ukraine – General Staff

11:18, 18.08.2015 1 min read

Russia has concentrated up to 50,000 soldiers on the border with Ukraine to exert pressure on the country's leadership in the Minsk process, spokesman of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Vladyslav Selezniov has said.

"As we know, around 50,000 servicemen of the Russian Federation are present on the state border between Ukraine and Russia. In such a manner, Russia is trying to exert pressure on the Ukrainian side, which has taken an uncompromising and firm stance at the negotiations in Minsk," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Selezniov also said that the events in Sartana (a neighborhood of Mariupol) on Monday night once again proves that "the militants do not [have any] scruples to use any means to maximally escalate the situation in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zone."

"Representatives of the so-called 'Donetsk People's Republic' and 'Luhansk People's Republic' are not looking for peace, but [want to] whip up tensions at most," he added.