Ukraine warns west to beware Russian ally in Syria

By Christian Oliver in Brussels and Roman Olearchyk in Kiev

Ukraine is urging the west not to lose focus on Russia’s aggression in the east of the country as Moscow styles itself as an ally in the war against Isis.

Senior officials in Kiev are fearful that a “pivot to Syria” by Russian President Vladimir Putin is blinding western countries to Moscow’s continued shelling and attacks in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. They stress that Ukrainian soldiers are dying every week.

In response to concerns over an EU rapprochement with Moscow, Ukrainian leaders have spoken out forcefully against a recent European plan to import more Russian gas to Germany through a new pipeline. The project could rob Kiev of €2bn of annual gas transit fees, which are vital to the country’s fragile economy.

On Monday, the EU officially extended its economic sanctions against Russia for another six months.

Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine’s foreign minister, welcomed these as “very important”. However, he also cautioned that there were no signs that Mr Putin’s deployment of troops and jets to Syria meant that he was pulling back from the conflict in Donbass.

“The sense that Russia, by engaging in Syria, is creating a sort of trade-off with Donbass is definitely not the case,” he told reporters in Brussels. “I believe that the Russians are good at trading off instability, like on a stock exchange. They are creating more instability here, more instability there: in Moldova, Ukraine and the whole Middle East.”

Mr Klimkin also sharply criticised the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, seen as one of the prime examples of western European companies engaging commercially with Moscow less than two years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine’s far east, a conflict where more than 9,000 people have died.

“For us, it is not just about losing a considerable sum of money because of transit, it is about Putin deliberately [breaking] the link to more security, and transit is always about more security, to central and eastern Europe,” he said.

Vasyl Hrytsak, who was promoted this year to head Ukraine’s SBU state security service, said: “Putin has changed tactics after his blitzkrieg in eastern Ukraine failed . . . Putin is doing all he can to draw attention towards the Syria conflict and divert it away from Ukraine.”

During a recent interview with the Financial Times, Mr Hrytsak said the most recent peak in gunfire, shelling and other attacks in eastern Ukraine came while the west’s attention was diverted by the Syria stand-off.

“In using the Syria card, Putin is again at the negotiating table with the world’s top decision makers,” said Mr Hrytsak. “[At the same time] there is a lingering effort to destabilise our country from within, including through routine shelling of our positions in the east and terrorist attacks as far away from front lines as in Kiev.”

Although the intensity of battles on the eastern front lines remains much lower than last year, he said Moscow was using more guerrilla tactics. Russia denies any involvement in a growing trend of attacks in Ukraine using explosive devices, and Ukraine’s claims are hard to substantiate.

Still, over the past two years, there have been numerous instances in which small bombs were used in attacks on infrastructure such as railways, and even a depot where volunteers collect clothes for Ukrainian soldiers.

Mr Klimkin complained that Russian-backed separatists were preventing Ukrainian maintenance teams from repairing power and water supplies, despite the impending winter.

Russia insists that its regular forces are not involved in such activities, but Mr Klimkin disagreed. “In every illegal or mercenary unit, there is a regular Russian officer,” he added.

Original