The Ukraine crisis seems to take a turn from bad to worse. On Monday, National Security and Defense Council deputy secretary said on TV that “Unfortunately, Ukraine, as never before, is on the brink of wide-scale aggression from our northern neighbor” according to Interfax – Ukraine News Agency. Since the beginning of the conflict, constant Russian intervention was claimed by both Ukrainian and western sources, although hardly any proof was gathered against Moscow until now. Recent FP sources claim that new evidence revealed that multiple rocket launchers were used from the Russian mining town of Gukovo, near the Ukrainian border into Ukraine. The video footage should be confirmed, however. Several days ago, a Ukrainian AN-26 cargo plane was shut down by a missile considered by the government of Kiev as being fired from Russian territory as well. This incident happened just a day after a Ukrainian artillery shell killed a Russian civilian over the border.
Wall Streel Journal sources announced that Russia redeployed 10.000-12.000 troops along the Ukrainian border. Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin, declared on CNN that a continuous inflow of weapons (including armored vehicles) and personel from Russian Federation continues to destabilize the eastern part of the country: “And as you know, you can probably buy Kalashnikov in a kind of shop on the black market, but you can’t buy tanks or you can’t buy anti-air missiles there.” The efforts made by the Ukrainian government to seal the border with Russia are not successful enough, the separatist rebels capturing several Ukrainian border points. This month, the Ukrainian forces were able to cut in two the territory controlled by the insurgents (AP). Despite this, the same source cites that two days ago the rebels retook a village near the border from the military forces, claiming that two Ukrainian armored vehicles were destroyed and one was captured.
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The anti aircraft weapons in the war zone claimed in the recent past other victims as well. On June 14th, an Il-76 cargo plane belonging to Ukrainian Air Force was shot down, killing all 49 people on board. On July 16, a Ukrainian Su-25 military attack aircraft was shot down over Ukrainian soil. Yesterday’s disaster of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 make us ask ourselves if the death of 298 people couldn’t be a sign of the international community’s indifference regarding the true scale of the conflict in Ukraine, and also maybe we should ask ourselves why nobody in the world (and there are quite a few organizations or companies involved) thought anything about shutting down or avoiding an airspace that recently witnessed so many “successful” anti aircraft activity.