From the U.K. ambassador to Kyiv:
In case you missed this yesterday ...
Kyiv Celebrates Ukrainian Independence With Military Parade
Ukraine celebrated its Independence Day with an elaborate military parade through central Kyiv. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was among the guests for the event, which included columns of Ukrainian forces and their weapons, along with troops from the United States, Canada, Britain, Poland, and other countries from the region. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
NATO Chief Urges Transparency Ahead Of Belarus War Games
By RFE/RL
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has urged Moscow to meet its international commitments to be fully transparent about war games planned for next month in Belarus and western Russia.
"We are going to be watching very closely the course of these exercises," Stoltenberg told journalists in Warsaw on August 25 following talks with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo.
He was referring to the Zapad 2017 joint Belarusian-Russian military exercises that are expected to take place September 14-20.
"All countries have the right to exercises of their armed forces but the countries should also respect the obligation to be transparent," Stoltenberg said.
Russia has dismissed concerns over the drills.
Later on August 25, NATO’s Stoltenberg was set to meet troops contributing to NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence at a military training facility headquarters in Orzysz, 60 kilometers from the border with Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea that borders Poland and Lithuania.
NATO has deployed four multinational battalion-size battlegroups to Poland and the three Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- to protect and reassure Eastern European member states that are worried about increasingly aggressive moves by Russia following its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in March 2014 and its continued support for separatists in the country’s east.
In an interview with AP on August 24, Stoltenberg said Russia is using "loopholes" to minimize the number of NATO personnel allowed to observe the exercises.
Under Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) rules known as the Vienna Document, states conducting maneuvers involving more than 13,000 troops must notify other nations in advance and be open to observers.
Belarus has said Zapad 2017 involves 12,700 troops -- just under the limit. But NATO members suspect many more troops will end up participating.
Belarus earlier this week said it invited observers from seven countries to the drills. Stoltenberg told AP that NATO will send two experts in response to Minsk's offer, adding that this is not enough.
NATO routinely invites Russia to watch its war games as a confidence-building measure, Stoltenberg told AP, but "Russia has never, since the end of the Cold War, invited any NATO ally to observe any of their exercises."
Speaking to the Rossia-24 news channel on August 24, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin described Zapad 2017 as “a regular, routine joint exercise.”
“It is not aggression, as some countries see it," Fomin added. "I do not see any reason to be afraid. Everything, as usual, will be open and friendly."
A NATO official earlier this week told RFE/RL that greater transparency is important to "prevent misperceptions and miscalculations" in response to military exercises.
Russia and Belarus are choosing a "selective approach" to transparency that does not provide observers with opportunities to talk to individual soldiers about the exercises or conduct overflights, this official said.
Lithuania's Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis warned in June that Moscow might use the maneuvers as cover for an aggressive troop buildup on NATO's eastern flank.
Karoblis said his government estimated that 100,000 Russian troops would be involved in the exercises, rather than the official 12,700.
With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, Interfax, and Richard Jozwiak in Brussels
Mattis Emphasizes U.S. Support For Ukraine, Says Considering Lethal Weapons
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has accused Russia of seeking to “redraw international borders by force" and said that Washington is "actively reviewing" supplying Ukraine with new defensive weaponry.
Mattis, the first U.S. defense chief to visit Ukraine in a decade, also reiterated that the United States “won’t accept” Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.
Mattis made the comments in Kyiv on August 24, the 26th anniversary of Ukraine’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.
"Have no doubt," he said at a joint news conference with President Petro Poroshenko. "The United States stands with Ukraine."
"On the defensive lethal weapons, we are actively reviewing it," Mattis said, adding that he will inform Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Donald Trump about his position on the issue "in very specific terms."
"Defensive weapons are not provocative unless you are an aggressor, and clearly Ukraine is not an aggressor since it is their own territory where the fighting is happening," Mattis said, appearing to signal support for Kyiv’s request for defensive weaponry, including possibly powerful antitank missiles.
Mattis said sanctions against Moscow will remain in place until it stops supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine and returns Crimea -- the Black Sea peninsula seized by Russia in March 2014.
He repeated Washington’s commitment to diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in Ukraine’s east, where fighting between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014.
The defense secretary also accused Russia of not abiding by the February 2015 Minsk agreement meant to put an end to the conflict.
"Despite Russia's denials, we know they are seeking to redraw international borders by force, undermining the sovereign and free nations of Europe," Mattis said.
He also said that the United States is committed to “building the capacity” of Ukraine’s armed forces."
Russian officials and separatist leaders denounced the discussion about providing Kyiv with defensive lethal weapons and rejected Mattis's assertion that providing such weapons would not be "provocative."
The "ambition to acquire lethal weapons...is surely going to be perceived in Donbas as a very bad and threatening signal," said Russia's negotiator over the Ukraine conflict, Boris Gryzlov.
Gryzlov also rejected Mattis's statement that the Kyiv government is not an "aggressor" because the conflict is entirely on its own territory.
"No one should forget the standoff in eastern Ukraine is an internal political conflict that the country's top echelons have already tried to curb by military force," he said.
Separatist leader Oleksandr Zakharchenko said, "As soon as Ukraine gets the weaponry, the Ukrainian Army will unleash
military actions automatically the next day."
Addressing a military parade attended by Mattis and several other Western defense chiefs, Poroshenko earlier said that "Ukraine is ready to give a tough military response to the aggressor if he tries to go on the offensive" -- a warning to Moscow and the separatists not to seek to take more territory in eastern Ukraine.
But he said that Ukraine's "priority" is a "peaceful, diplomatic, political, and law-based path to the return” of Crimea and separatist-held territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
"I have confidence in our allies," Poroshenko said. He thanked defense ministers and troops from Britain, Georgia, Estonia, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and the United States for attending or marching in the parade.
Trump had sent a letter of congratulation to Poroshenko, saying that the United States will continue to support Ukraine's “sovereignty and integrity” and the country’s “aspirations of becoming a truly European nation,” according to the Ukrainian presidential website.
One incident of violence marred the otherwise peaceful independence celebration.
Police said at least three people were injured in an explosion caused by an unknown object in the center of the capital, an incident Ukrainian authorities described as “hooliganism.”
Kurt Volker, the U.S. special envoy for efforts to end the conflict in Ukraine, was also in the Ukrainian capital.
He told Current Time TV last month that the Trump administration is considering sending Kyiv weapons to help government forces defend themselves against the separatists.
Volker told the Russian-language network, which is run by RFE/RL in cooperation with Voice of America, that he did not think arming Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons would "provoke Russia to do more than they are already doing."
U.S. media reported on August 6 that the Pentagon had recommended sending a package of lethal defensive military aid to Ukraine worth about $50 million.
The weapons package would reportedly include Javelin shoulder-launched antitank missiles, which Kyiv has long sought to defend against the Russia-backed forces it has been fighting in its east for more than three years.
Ukraine’s Independence Day celebrations come as the Kyiv government and separatists committed to a cease-fire before the start of the September 1 return to school for children.
Martin Sajdik, the envoy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on the Ukraine crisis, said on August 23 that an “indefinite” cease-fire would commence at midnight on August 25.
Several truce deals announced as part of the Minsk agreement have failed to hold.
In a statement, the chief monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM), Ertugrul Apakan, called the truce "an encouraging joint political signal from all signatories” of the Minsk agreement.
The deal set out steps to end the war and resolve the status of the portion of the Donbas region held by Russia-backed separatists, but progress toward implementation has been very slow.
The latest cease-fire was agreed late on August 22 during a phone call between the leaders of Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine -- the so-called “Normandy Four.”
In the call, Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron all voiced strong support for a lasting cease-fire to allow children in eastern Ukraine to attend school at the start of the new term, the Kremlin and Poroshenko's press service said.
The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Moscow for its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and for its support of separatists in eastern Ukraine.
With reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, TASS, and Interfax
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Thursday, August 24, 2017. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage. Thanks for reading and take care.