Russia flexes its military muscle … again

MOSCOW, Russia — The Kremlin will adjust its military doctrine to cope with what it believes is an increasingly serious threat from NATO, reflecting ever-growing tensions between Russia and the West over the escalating crisis in Ukraine.

Mikhail Popov, deputy chief of Russia’s Security Council, told the state news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday his country would update its 2010 doctrine to address the “new military dangers” that have emerged in the wake of turmoil in the Middle East and Ukraine’s months-long war with separatist rebels.

One of those threats, Popov said, is NATO’s eastward expansion amid a worsening Cold War-style standoff between Moscow and the West, in which Ukraine’s Western allies are waging an “unprecedented propaganda campaign” aimed at casting Russia as an enemy.

“We have not managed to establish an equal dialogue with our partners,” he said. “Russia is constantly expected to offer unilateral concessions on many issues in international relations.”

Popov’s comments come days after Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk asked parliament to scrap a law on Ukraine’s neutrality, a move that would pave the way for potential NATO membership. They also appear to reflect a rise in Moscow’s distrust of the Western military alliance and what the Kremlin says is its bid to pull former Soviet subjects into its orbit.

There may be reasons for the Kremlin to worry.

On Thursday, NATO representatives will meet at a summit in Wales, where they’re expected to hash out a new rapid-response force aimed at countering what Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters Monday was “Russia’s aggressive behavior.”

He said the alliance would implement a Readiness Action Plan to create a “spearhead” within its current Response Force and establish a “more visible NATO presence in the East for as long as required.”

“And it will make NATO fitter, faster and more flexible to adjust to all kinds of security challenges,” Rasmussen said, according to a transcript posted to the NATO website.

Tensions between Russia and the West have risen sharply in recent days amid mounting evidence of Russian military involvement in eastern Ukraine, where security forces have suffered a dramatic reversal of fortune as Moscow-backed rebels staged a successful bid to open a new southern front and regain previously lost territory.

Military officials in Kyiv have accused Russia of sending troops and heavy armaments to bolster the separatists, a claim increasingly echoed by Ukraine’s Western allies but routinely denied by Moscow.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said Russian troops were reinforcing positions in several towns and cities across the east.

That alleged support, some observers suggest, has been aimed at propping up what had previously been a flagging rebel military effort and forcing Kyiv to the negotiating table, where it would be forced to accept a deal that grants significant power to the two breakaway republics.

Ukrainian officials have instead stepped up their own rhetoric, accusing Russia of broadening the scope and intensity of fighting.

On Monday, Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey likened the worsening conflict — in which more than 2,000 have died, more than half of them civilians — to “a great war” in which casualties “will no longer be counted in the hundreds, but thousands, maybe tens of thousands.”

“We must urgently build up defenses against Russia,” he wrote on Facebook, “which intends to not only strengthen its hold on territories previously occupied by terrorists, but to advance other territories of Ukraine.”

Such rhetoric has been countered in Moscow with repeated claims — backed up by actions — that Kyiv itself is deliberately fanning the flames.

A Russian court on Tuesday ordered the seizure of local assets belonging to Ihor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch-turned-regional governor loathed by the Kremlin and rebels for organizing and financing volunteer battalions that have played a key role in the fighting.

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Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday admonished what he said was the “party of war in Kyiv” and urged the United States “to talk sense” into its Ukrainian allies, Reuters reported.

Lavrov cast Russia as the peacemaker in the crisis, a role Putin has publicly sought to play but whose veracity fell further into question after a report in an Italian newspaper claimed he told European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, “if I want, I will take Kyiv in two weeks.”

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov later told reporters the quote had been “taken out of context and carried a completely different meaning,” according to the state news agency ITAR-TASS.