Putin Says Ukraine Trying to Provoke a New Conflict over Crimea
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of using terrorist tactics to try to provoke a new conflict and destabilize annexed Crimea after Russia said it had thwarted two armed Ukrainian attempts to get saboteurs into the peninsula.
Russia's FSB security service said on Wednesday two people were killed in clashes and its forces had dismantled a Ukrainian spy network inside Crimea. Kiev denied the assertions, calling them an attempt by Moscow to create an excuse to escalate towards a war.
The Russian president accused Kiev of playing a dangerous game and said he saw no point in holding a new round of talks about the troubled peace process in eastern Ukraine on the sidelines of a G20 summit in China next month.
"The people who seized power in Kiev ... have switched to terror tactics instead of searching for ways for a peaceful settlement," Putin told a news conference, saying Russia would not let such actions pass without a response, Reuters reported.
"The attempt to provoke an outbreak of violence, to provoke a conflict is nothing other than a desire to distract (Ukrainian) society from its problems," he added, calling Ukraine's actions "criminal."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the Russian accusations were a cynical pretext to make more military threats against Ukraine.
"Russian accusations towards Ukraine of terrorism in the occupied Crimea sound as preposterous and cynical as the statements of the Russian leadership about the absence of the Russian troops in Donbass (region of Ukraine)," Poroshenko said.
The events - which the FSB said involved at least two armed clashes on the border between Crimea and Ukraine - would be the most serious escalation on the contested peninsula since Moscow annexed it from Ukraine in 2014.
