KYIV: Ukraine's military warned on Friday that Russian-backed separatists in the country's east are conducting military exercises, completing a near encirclement of Ukraine by hostile forces. The drills tested the force's preparation for live fire operations, practising "driving artillery, tank and armoured vehicles" in field exercises, the Ukrainian statement said. The statement said some units of the force were put on their highest level of alert and that senior Russian military officers were observing the activity. The warning was the latest evidence of a shift by Kyiv to more alarming commentary. That follows weeks of efforts to minimise the threat of an invasion. Ukraine this week began its own military exercises to coincide with joint Russian and Belarusian exercises to the north of Ukraine, in Belarus.
To the south, the Russian navy announced on Thursday the closure of large swaths of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov for live-fire exercises by its fleet that will effectively blockade Ukrainian ports. The naval exercises were scheduled to begin on Sunday and last six days. Russia has massed armored vehicles and soldiers near its borders to the northeast of Ukraine and in the south on the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. To the east, the army of Russian-backed separatist in two enclaves in eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, was put on partial alert and ordered to conduct field exercises, Ukraine's military intelligence agency said.
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