By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
A column of tanks drive from a rebel-territory to Donetsk near the town of Shakhtarsk, eastern Ukraine on Nov. 10.
KIEV, Ukraine — Tanks and other military vehicles pouring over the border from Russia into eastern Ukraine. Nightly artillery battles in the region’s biggest city, Donetsk, and reports of fighting around another regional capital. And now, sightings of the “green men,” professional soldiers in green uniforms without insignia, the same type of forces that carried out the invasion of Crimea last spring.
A senior NATO official confirmed on Wednesday what Ukrainian military officials and monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been saying for days now: Russian troops and military equipment are crossing the border into Ukraine, seemingly preparing for renewed military action, though what exactly remains unclear.
The statement drew stern and dismissive denials from Moscow, which for months has denied any military intervention in eastern Ukraine, though it has acknowledged publicly that Russian “volunteers” have crossed into Ukraine to support the pro-Russia separatists.
In light of the military buildup, Western officials finally seemed ready to acknowledge that a cease-fire agreement signed in September had fallen apart, and that the threat to peace in Europe posed by the Ukraine crisis had returned in a possibly more virulent form.
At the United Nations headquarters in New York, the Security Council held an emergency meeting on Ukraine — its 26th — where a top official, Assistant Secretary-General Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen, told diplomats he was “deeply concerned by the possibility of a return to full-scale fighting.”
The official also expressed fear of what he called a “frozen and protracted conflict that would entrench the status quo in southeastern Ukraine for years or several decades to come.”
The NATO official, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the group’s top military commander, said he was “concerned about convoys of trucks taking artillery and supplies into east Ukraine from Russia.” He said there were increased numbers of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, training militants including in the use of sophisticated weaponry.
NATO Reports Increased Russian Troop Movement
More than two months into a shaky cease-fire, NATO reported significant new Russian troop movements into Ukraine. NATO’s top military commander said that convoys of tanks, artillery and combat troops were streaming over the border, in what appeared to be preparations for renewed military action.View full graphic »
“Across the last two days we have seen the same thing that O.S.C.E. is reporting,” General Breedlove said at a news conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. “We have seen columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems and Russian combat troops entering into Ukraine.”
The full scope of the Russian incursion is not clear, General Breedlove said. The convoys seemed to be heading east toward Donetsk, a spokesman for the security organization, Michael Bociurkiw, said Wednesday. “We have reported since Saturday are three separate sightings of large military convoys — 126 vehicles in total — in areas controlled by armed rebel groups in Donetsk,” he added.
General Breedlove said NATO was unsure about their intent. “It is our first guess that these forces will go in to make this a more contiguous, more whole and capable pocket of land in order to then hold onto it long term,” he said.
The self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic claims all territory of the Donetsk region of Ukraine, but occupies only about half of it now. Rebel field commanders have spoken openly of a planned offensive for weeks.
Russia forcefully denied that any of its troops or equipment had crossed into eastern Ukraine, and a government spokesman dismissed General Breedlove as unreliable and “alarmist.”
The Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove.
The Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, confirmed that Russian troops were moving into eastern Ukraine, but that NATO was unsure of their numbers or intentions.
“We have stressed repeatedly that there have never been and there are no facts behind the regular blasts of hot air from Brussels regarding the supposed presence of Russian armed forces in Ukraine,” the spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, told Russian news agencies on Wednesday. “We have stopped paying attention to NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Philip Breedlove’s unfounded statements alleging that he observed Russian military convoys invading Ukraine.”
Despite that denial, Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military, said at a news conference in Kiev on Wednesday that there was grim evidence of Russia’s involvement moving in the opposite direction: five truckloads of bodies of dead Russian fighters, driven back to Russia on Tuesday night.
Sporadic fighting has continued from virtually the moment the truce agreement was signed on Sept. 5 in Minsk, Belarus. Ukrainian officials have complained ever since that Russia was taking advantage of the cease-fire to reinforce the rebels in eastern Ukraine with more fighters and equipment.
Skirmishes have broken out daily along sections of the front line: at the Donetsk Airport; a highway hub at the town of Debaltseve; at an electrical plant north of Luhansk; and on a road leading from the Russian border to the Azov Sea port of Mariupol. Artillery barrages hit in and near Donetsk multiple times a day owing to the fighting over the airport, now nothing more than an obliterated hulk of scorched steel.
For weeks, however, officials on all sides had insisted that the cease-fire was holding, a state of denial that underscored the intractability of the conflict.
For President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine, acknowledging the failure of the cease-fire would have meant conceding his inability to exert control in the war zone. For Russia, it would have meant inviting new economic sanctions by Europe and the United States. And for Western officials it would have meant pressure to impose more sanctions, which are unpopular among business interests in their own countries.
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Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow, and James Kanter from Brussels.
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