Russia | Ukraine
Ukraine crisis: Russian Parliament allows Vladimir Putin to use armed forces outside country
Moscow/IBNS: The Russian Parliament's upper house on Tuesday voted to allow President Vladimir Putin to use the country's army outside the territory to support separatists in Ukraine, reports said.
A total of 153 Russian senators backed the decision.
Although Russia's foreign ministry earlier said they are not planning to send troops to eastern Ukraine "for now," Putin asked the Federation Council to approve the use of army outside the country.
This comes a day after Putin had recognised the independence of two rebel-held breakaway eastern Ukrainian regions, amid escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine with a Russian troop build-up near the two nations' borders spurring fears that Moscow could launch an invasion.
He had signed decrees recognising two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine — Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic.
Currently, Russia and Ukraine are in a state of war, with Moscow has reportedly massed more than 100,000 troops near its border with Ukraine and has sent the military personnel to exercises in neighbouring Belarus amid rising fears that Russia could invade Ukraine any moment.
The border tensions come nearly eight years after Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula in 2014 and backed a bloody rebellion in the eastern Donbas region.
Moscow has accused the Ukrainian government of failing to implement the Minsk agreement, which sought to end war in the Donbas region of Ukraine, while the Russian government feared that Ukraine’s membership of the EU and NATO would complete a western wall of allied countries by restricting Russia’s access to the Black Sea.
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