Russia has 9,000 troops on Ukrainian soil, Poroshenko tells Davos forum

Russia has 9,000 troops on Ukrainian soil, Poroshenko tells Davos forum

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told the World Economic Forum on Wednesday that Russia had 9,000 troops on Ukrainian soil and he called on Moscow to withdraw them.

In a speech to the forum in Davos, Switzerland, he said the Russian troops were backed by a range of heavy weapons including tanks and artillery systems.

"If this is not aggression, what is aggression?" Poroshenko asked. He called on Moscow to comply with a peace plan and cooperate in closing the long joint border with Ukraine and withdrawing Russian forces. 

Source: news.yahoo.com

IS THERE NO ONE WHO WILL STAND UP FOR UKRAINE?

Seems the West will do anything these days to avoid a confrontation with Vladimir Putin.

IS THERE NO ONE WHO WILL STAND UP FOR UKRAINE?

Oleksander Turchynov, the secretary of Ukraine's national defense council, told the country's parliament something startling last week. He said that there were 8,500 Russian regular troops now deployed in eastern Ukraine and that another 52,000 were poised just on the other side of its eastern border.

The figures are dramatic-and so much larger than what has been reported during the months of Russian attempts to destabilize Ukraine, while Vladimir Putin 's denials of his troops' presence continue with stubborn ridiculousness. I asked a Western security expert if the numbers sounded plausible.

He responded: "It would be difficult to believe that the Ukrainians could have such hard numbers on Russian troop presence without that also being visible to Western intelligence." A day later, Alexander Vershbow, NATO's deputy secretary-general, described the situation in Ukraine as deteriorating.