Ukraine urges Russian pullback

Armed men wearing military fatigues occupy armored personnel carriers outside the regional government building seized by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk on Wednesday. Genya Savilov / Agence France-Presse

Kremlin warns 'sharp escalation' pushing country toward civil war

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk on Wednesday urged Moscow to pull its "raiding forces" back from eastern Ukraine to "halt provocative actions".

"The Russian government should immediately withdraw its intelligence and sabotage groups, condemn terrorists and require them to abandon the seized buildings," Yatsenyuk told a Cabinet meeting in Kiev.

Describing the movement of pro-Moscow activists in eastern Ukraine as "terrorism", Yatsenyuk said Kiev has evidence that "Russian special services supervise those actions".

Yatsenyuk said that the plea to move Russian forces away from eastern Ukraine would be the main message Kiev would communicate to the international community during Thursday's four-party talks over the crisis in Geneva involving the top diplomats of Russia, the European Union, the United States and Ukraine.

His call came as NATO said on Wednesday it had decided on a series of immediate steps to reinforce its forces in Eastern Europe because of the Ukraine crisis.

"You will see deployments at sea, in the air, and on land take place immediately; that means within days," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference after the decisions were taken by NATO ambassadors.

NATO fighter aircraft will fly more sorties over the Baltic region; allied ships will deploy to the Baltic sea, the eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere; and allied military staff will be sent out to improve NATO's preparedness, training and exercises, Rasmussen said.

Russian flags

Armored vehicles bearing Russian flags rolled through a flashpoint town in eastern Ukraine, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Ukraine was on the brink of civil war.

Ukraine's defense ministry said pro-Russia activists on Wednesday seized six armored personnel carriers from the Ukrainian armed forces with the help of Russian agents.

"A column was blocked by a crowd of local people in Kramatorsk with members of a Russian diversionary-terrorist group among them," the statement said. "As a result of the blocking, extremists seized the equipment."

The statement said the troop carriers were now in Slavyansk, guarded by "people in uniforms who have no relation to Ukraine's armed forces".

Russian media said Ukrainian troops in the vehicles had switched sides to join the separatists.

Pictures taken by Reuters photographers showed that APCs driven into Slavyansk had been under the control of Ukrainian armed forces earlier on Wednesday,

A soldier guarding one of six troop carriers now under the control of pro-Russian separatists told Reuters he was a member of Ukraine's 25th paratrooper division from Dnipropetrovsk.

"All the soldiers and the officers are here. We are all boys who won't shoot our own people," said the soldier, whose uniform did not have any identifying markings on it.

"They haven't fed us for three days on our base. They're feeding us here. Who do you think we are going to fight for?" he said.

APCs marked with the numbers 815, 842 and 847 were among six under Ukrainian control in the center of Kramatorsk early on Wednesday. They were seen under the control of pro-Russian separatists in the center of Slavyansk later.

Ukrainian soldiers with the vehicles in Kramatorsk on Wednesday morning identified themselves as members of the 25th paratrooper division.

'New Berlin wall'

As the situation on the ground appeared to escalate, the authorities in Kiev ratcheted up the verbal attack on Russia, with prime minister Yatsenyuk accusing Moscow of trying to build "a new Berlin wall".

On Tuesday, authorities in Kiev launched what they called an "anti-terrorist operation", sending tanks toward Slavyansk in a high-risk strategy sharply condemned by the Kremlin but supported in Washington.

The 20 tanks and armored personnel carriers sent to Slavyansk were the most forceful response yet by the Western-backed government in Kiev to the pro-Moscow militants' occupation of state buildings in nearly 10 cities across Ukraine's industrial heartland.

But the move drew a sharp response from Putin in a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"The Russian president remarked that the sharp escalation of the conflict has placed the country, in effect, on the verge of civil war," the Kremlin said in a statement.

But both Putin and Merkel "emphasized the importance" of Thursday's Geneva talks.

The White House described Ukraine's military operation as a "measured" response to a lawless insurgency that had put the government in an "untenable" situation.

Washington also said it was coordinating with its European allies to slap more sanctions on Russia over the crisis.

Xinhua-AFP-Reuters