WASHINGTON — NATO’s top general warned Sunday that Russia’s land grab could reach beyond Crimea and threaten Ukraine’s neighbor Moldova, as the region teetered on the brink of war.
US Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, commander of US and NATO forces in Europe, said Russia has massed a huge force on Ukraine’s eastern border and could have designs on Moldova’s separatist Transnistria region.
“The [Russian] force that is at the Ukrainian border now to the east is very, very sizable and very, very ready,” he said. “There is absolutely sufficient force postured on the eastern border of Ukraine to run to Transnistria if the decision was made to do that, and that is very worrisome.”
Transnistria, where most of the half-million residents speak Russian and about 30 percent are ethnic Russian, declared independence from Moldova in 1990 but was not recognized by any United Nations member state.
Russia’s seizure of Crimea, following the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president by mass protests, has triggered the most dangerous East-West confrontation since the Cold War.
Despite US and European Union economic sanctions on Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no sign of backing off after annexing Crimea, which has a majority Russian population and is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Putin “is not done in Ukraine,” warned House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.).
“He goes to bed at night thinking of Peter the Great and wakes up thinking of Stalin,” Rogers said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“We need to be a little bit tougher with Putin or he is going to continue to take territory to fulfill what he believes is rightfully Russia,” he said.
Ukraine Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia said the threat of war was “becoming higher” and that Ukrainians, although vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Russian troops, were “ready to defend their homeland.”
President Obama was slated to leave Sunday on a six-day swing through Europe and the Middle East that kicks off Monday with a Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands.