BREAKING: Top Ukrainian military officials came under a shelling attack during a tour of the front of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine. The officials fled to a bomb shelter before hustling from the area.
MOSCOW — Separatist leaders in easternordered a full military mobilization Saturday amid a spike of violence in the war-torn region and fears in the West that Russia might use the strife as a pretext for an invasion.
The separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting for almost eight years. But the violence along the line of contact separating the two sides, including a humanitarian convoy hit by shelling, has risen in recent days. In a sign of heightened worry about an invasion, the NATO military alliance relocated staff of its liaison office in Kyiv to a city in western Ukraine and to Brussels. A NATO official told The Associated Press that safety of its personnel was the top concern.
Ukraine’s ruling party, Servant of the People, echoed his sentiment in an online statement Saturday and accused Russia of “trying to artificially create a pretext for a full-scale aggression against Ukraine.”on Saturday. The Kremlin said Putin, who pledged to protect Russia’s national interests against what it sees as encroaching Western threats, was watching the drills together with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko from the situation room in the Kremlin.
The official also said the number of Russian ground units known as battalion tactical groups in the border area had grown to as many as 125, up from 83 two weeks ago. Each group has 750 to 1,000 soldiers. Adding to the tensions, two explosions shook the rebel-controlled city of Luhansk early Saturday. The Luhansk Information Center said one of the blasts was in a natural gas main. The center cited witnesses as saying the other was at a vehicle service station.
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