According to ukraine's military separatists backed by russia are stockpiling
weapons in eastern ukraine in violation of the 2015 mints peace
agreement.
In the last 24 hours, russian armed militants have deployed 275 military
vehicles in the parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that have been
under their control since 2014. Ukraine's military press office said,
self-propelled guns and tanks are among them.
By arming the separatists russia is creating systematic grounds for further
escalation at the contact line, according to a statement released by the
ukrainian military on facebook.
Ukraine and separatist held areas are separated by a contact line. The 500
kilometers line of separation between ukrainian forces and russian-backed
separatist rebels suffers heavy daily violations of the ceasefire agreed in
minsk in 2015.
Ukraine has fought a conflict with pro-russia rebels in its eastern region
since 2014. The war erupted shortly after moscow annexed ukraine's Crimea
Peninsula and has since claimed more than 14.000 lives.
Current tensions rose in late october, when videos began circulating on
social media showing Russia moving troops, tanks and missiles towards the
ukrainian border.
Ukrainian officials said at the time that russia had moved about 115.000
soldiers to the area. Kiev and western countries accused moscow of sending
troops and weapons across the border to support pro-russia separatists.
The kremlin denies those claims.
In the wake of recent escalation and hostilities between Russia and
Ukraine, the russian government has made it clear that it has no plans to
invade the country. Russia says it wants nato to deny membership to
Ukraine and other former soviet states and to reduce its military strength
to levels last seen in 1997.
However, with hundred russian tanks are now inside the ukrainian
territory kiev and its western allies have their own view on how to
solve the issue.
Ukraine claims Russia is behind the cyber attacks on its government
websites
After the cyber attack that targeted around 70 ukrainian government
websites on friday, ukraine announced that russia was behind the
attacks. the ukrainian officials claimed that the cyber attacks were
russia's response to failed nato talks.
Russia has built up 100.000 strong troops near ukraine borders.
ukraine's information ministry officials pointed out that russian media
covered the incident before the attack happened.
A message in ukrainian russian and polish was posted on the hacked
websites that said ukrainian, "all your personal data has been uploaded
onto the public internet, this is for your past your present and your
future."
Poland's government issued a statement stating that the message in
polish contained serious grammatical errors and did not appear to be
written by a native speaker, also blaming russia.
Polish foreign ministry spokesperson Lucas Jacina tweeted, "we interpret
the publication of statements in polish as another attempt to
destabilize polish ukrainian relations."
Meanwhile microsoft warned on saturday that the company had detected a
highly destructive form of malware in many governments and private
computer networks in Ukraine that seems to be waiting to be triggered.
The company also announced on thursday that investigators who watch over
the company's global networks detected the code and said these systems
span multiple government, non-profit and information technology
organizations all based in ukraine in a blog post.
Ukraine's ministry of digital development said in a statement on sunday
that a number of government agencies had been struck by destructive
malware, presumably the same code that microsoft reported.
The statement read all evidence indicates that russia is behind the
cyber attack. Moscow continues to wage a hybrid war and is actively
building up its forces in the information in cyberspaces.
The ministry has accused the country of fighting a hybrid war and trying
to destabilize already tense situation and deteriorate trust in the
ukrainian government.
After the cyber attack Ukraine was backed by both NATO and the US.
NATO announced that it will soon sign an agreement with the country on
enhanced cyber cooperation while the US said that it will provide all
kinds of support needed by the country to recover from the attacks.
"We are going to mobilize all our resources to help ukraine tackle
this cyber attack. Sadly, we knew it could happen," said Joseph
Burrell the European Union's Foreign Policy Chief.
Victoria Newland the US under secretary of state for political affairs
told financial times that, a large-scale cyber attack against
ukrainian government websites on friday was a tried and true part of
the russian playbook and pointed out that the possibility of a Russian
invasion is getting stronger, ramping up Washington's warnings.
On the other hand, russia denied the accusations and any kind of
involvement in the cyber attack.
"We have nothing to do with it. russia has nothing to do with these
cyber attacks," Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson Dmitry
Piskov said.
"Ukrainians are blaming everything on russia. even their bad weather
in their country," the spokesperson added.
Russia has been accused of using cyber attacks to target its political
opponents including ukraine. The US and European countries many times
before.
