Russia Deploys S-400 Missile System To Crimea, As Tensions With Ukraine Soar

In the latest escalation between the Kremlin and Kiev, yesterday we reported that Ukraine had put its troops near the Russia border on combat alert, following an incident that according to Russia was an attempted terrorist attack. Recall that Russia’s secret service, the Federal Security Service, said on Wednesday that it had foiled ‘terrorist acts’ prepared by Ukrainian military intelligence against infrastructure in the territory, with the aim of disrupting Russia’s parliamentary elections due on 18 September. Kiev denied the allegations. In response to the alleged operation, Putin said he was pulling out of international peace talks on the conflict in eastern Ukraine. He said he was no longer ready to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, and German and French leaders in the so-called Normandy format, which has been used for negotiations.
As such the Minsk peace process, which one can argue neither side had wanted, has been effectively put on hold (for more on the speculation behind the peace process fallout, read here).
Ukraine promptly denied all accusations, when president Petro Poroshenko and Ministry of Foreign Affairs sternly rejected Putin’s accusations that Kiev is committing terrorist acts in the disputed peninsula. “Accusations against Ukraine of terrorism in occupied Crimea sound as preposterous and cynical as the statements of the Russian leadership about the absence of Russian troops in [eastern Ukraine’s rebel-controlled] Donbass [region],” Poroshenko said.
“Ukraine condemns in the strongest terms yet another Kremlin-manufactured provocation and rejects all accusations, which are completely groundless,” the Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement. “Under a made up pretext, the Kremlin is undertaking another hybrid special operation with the aim to justify its future aggressive actions against Ukraine.”

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 12, 2016.