Ukraine`s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin during his two-day Washington visit attended a Tuesday hearing ”On Russian Policies and Intentions Toward Specific European Countries” at the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations.
Klimkin emphasized that Russia`s hybrid war against Ukraine translates into a shocking amount of Russian weaponry ”pumped into the occupied Donbas and Crimea.”
”It`s now about 4,200 regular troops and up to 40,000 militants, it`s about more than 400 tanks and 800 armored vehicles; it`s up to 1,000 artillery systems and over 200 multiple rocket launchers; around 23,000 troops in the occupied Crimea,” Klimkin said.
He also recalled how a Russian agent in the International Court of Justice had made a ”completely ridiculous statement that the Russian-backed militants actually discovered all that weaponry being hidden in the old Soviet coal mines.”
”Can anyone believe it?” Ukraine`s top diplomat exclaimed.
Also, the minister noted that the Kremlin`s war against Ukraine over the past three years has led to over 7% of the country`s territory being occupied, over 10,000 Ukrainians – both military and civilians – losing their lives, with more than 23,000 being injured.
Earlier, Russia`s agent at the ICJ Ilya Rogachev on Tuesday rejected Ukraine`s accusations of sponsoring terrorism in the east of Ukraine and supplying weapons to fighters of the self-proclaimed republics in Donbas, explaining that the weapons had been seized from the Ukrainian army and from former Soviet army storage sites built in coal mines in Ukrainian territory.
9 March 2017
What a crock from the Russians. Their own people, Colonel Igor Girkin has stated in press articles in Moscow newspapers that HE led the initial teams that occupied Crimea and later went on into Donetsk and Luhansk. “I was in charge of the only unit of Crimean militia, the spetsnaz company which carried out combat missions. But after the combat for cartography base when 2 people died (I was that battle’s commander), the company was disbanded and its members parted.” (Igor Girkin, Newspaper “Zavtra”, 20 November 2014) Further he was part of the initial attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure in eastern Ukraine in order to “stir up” the local population and get ex-Yanukovich supporters to rebel / riot against the new government in Kyiv that replaced Yanukovich when he fled to Russia to avoid prosecution. “After all, I pressed the launching trigger of war. If our squad did not cross the border, at the end all would have been finished as in Kharkiv or Odessa. Practically, the flywheel of war which lasts until now was launched by our squad. And I bear a personal responsibility for what is happening there.” (Igor Girkin, Newspaper “Zavtra”, 20 November 2014). If not for these Russian Special forces in Crimea and later in eastern Ukraine there would not have been an invasion, occupation and annexation of Crimea and minor protests by dissatisfied Yanukovich supporters would have ended like they did in Kharkiv and Odessa, with local authorities regaining control of the situation.