On Thursday, Russia announced a new withdrawal of armed forces from the occupied Crimean peninsula, despite earlier announcements being met with scepticism by Ukraine’s Western partners. “Units of the southern military district are returning by rail to their permanent locations after completing tactical exercises on training fields on the Crimean peninsula,” the defense ministry said in a statement reported by Russian news media.
The announcement on Thursday is the latest in a series of reports that Russia is reducing its military force, which the West estimates to be over 100,000 troops and which Washington has suggested is prepared to invade. However, NATO, the US, and European officials have all denied that Russian forces are being withdrawn in any substantial way, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has stated that Moscow’s military personnel are in fact rotating.
In 2014, Russia seized control of the Crimean peninsula and backed pro-Moscow separatists in warfare that erupted that year, claiming over 14,000 lives.
The West wants Ukraine to join NATO, but it is a top priority for Putin’s government to prevent this from happening so that Western forces do not pose a danger to Moscow’s interests and supremacy in the region. Previously, Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union.
