Ukraine confirms Russia troops pullback
Ukraine yesterday confirmed that Russia had pulled its troops back from the border for the first time in a move that could ease spiralling tensions five days ahead of a make-or-break presidential poll.
The state border service's surprise announcement that none of the estimated 40,000 soldiers were now stationed within 10 kilometres (six miles) of Ukraine has the potential to deflate the bloody Kremlin-backed insurgency that threatens to tear the ex-Soviet nation apart.
The provisional Western-backed leaders in Kiev won another boost yesterday when Ukraine's richest tycoon Rinat Akhmetov denounced the armed rebels who have overrun a dozen cities in his eastern industrial power base as bandits who might create "genocide".
Meankwhile, US Vice President Joe Biden yesterday blasted Russia's annexation of Crimea, saying borders should not be changed at gunpoint, as he began a visit to Romania days before a crucial vote in Ukraine.
"Europe's borders should not be changed at the point of a gun," he told Romanian and US troops at the Otopeni military airbase near Bucharest.
The turmoil that began with the popular overthrow in February of a pro-Russian leader and then saw Kremlin forces retaliate by annexing the Crimean peninsula has plunged East-West relations to post-Cold War lows and stoked fears of all-out civil conflict.
The United Nations estimates that around 130 people have died since violence in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions near the Russian border first broke out in early April.
The UN refugee agency also said Tuesday that another 10,000 people -- many of them ethnic Tatars in Crimea -- have been internally displaced.
The United States and Nato have sent troops to Poland and the three tiny Baltic nations to calm jitters about Russian troops possibly not only overrunning Ukraine but also pushing further into Europe in a bid to reclaim ex-Soviet satellite states.
Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen had said on Monday that a real Russian withdrawal -- following several earlier promises by Putin -- would be an "important contribution to de-escalating the crisis".
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