Ukraine's military chief says Russia left troops in Belarus after war games:
The Ukrainian military's chief of staff says Russia left troops behind in Belarus after staging military exercises there, despite Moscow's pledge not to do so, Reuters reports.
Viktor Muzhenko's comments in an interview with the news agency on September 29 could heighten tensions further between Moscow and Kyiv, which have been locked in a standoff over Russia's 2014 seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and its backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The claim also contradicts a statement by the Belarusian Defense Ministry, which said that the last train of Russian troops who participated in the Zapad (West) 2017 military drills left Belarus on September 28.
"We had information that they had withdrawn only a few units of the declared 12,500 troops, of which 3,000 were Russians, but there were significantly more of them there," Reuters quoted Muzhenko as saying.
The September 14-20 war games in Belarus and parts of western Russia triggered concerns in neighboring NATO member states already wary of Moscow's intentions after its seizure of Crimea and military interference in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow and Minsk said the maneuvers involved some 12,700 troops in the two countries combined, but Western officials have said the true number may have been around 100,000.
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka said on the final day of the exercises that all Russian troops involved in the drills would leave Belarus.
There was no immediate comment from Russia on Muzhenko's claim. (Reuters, RFE/RL's Belarus Service)
This ends our live blogging for September 29. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Good morning. We'll start the live blog with this item that our news desk filed overnight:
Ukraine Prosecutor Says Suspects Detonator Triggered Munitions Blast
Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko has said investigators are operating under a theory that saboteurs may have used a detonator to trigger a massive explosion and fire at a munitions depot in central Ukraine this week.
Investigators do not believe, however, that a drone was involved in setting off the explosions in Kalynivka in the Vinnytsya region, Lutsenko told the Inter television channel late on September 29.
"We have no proof that it was an unmanned aerial device in Kalynivka, but we have all the facts of a possibly planted detonator, which likely caused the explosion," he said.
Lutsenko said Ukraine earlier this year detected a drone that investigators believe set off a massive explosion and fire on March 23 at a munitions depot on an army base in Balakliya, near Kharkiv.
"We see all signs of sabotage... We detected an unmanned aerial vehicle's flight across the Russian-Ukrainian border in Balakliya to drop thermobaric charges, which caused the explosions near Balakliya. Therefore, this is an act of sabotage on the part of Russia, which is destroying our military capability," he told Inter TV.
The Balakliya base is near the Russian border and about 100 kilometers from the front lines in the conflict between government forces and Russia-backed separatists further southeast.
Lutsenko told Inter TV that although he believes negligence by Ukrainian security forces guarding the depot in Kalynivka may have contributed to the incident there, "we are inclined to presume that all recent blasts are part of the Russian Federation's warfare."
The explosions and fire in both Kalynivka and Balakliya occurred late at night and thousands of people had to be evacuated from the surrounding areas.
The Kalynivka incident, which began late on September 26, forced the evacuation of more than 30,000 people and resulted in two injuries. The Balakliya incident resulted in two deaths, including a woman who died at the scene and another victim who died later in the hospital.
Ukrainian authorities said that almost all evacuees in Kalynivka by September 28 had been allowed to return home, despite some continuing explosions of ammunition in the depot warehouses, which authorities said no longer constituted a threat to the population.