Pentagon sets up hotline with Russia to avert Ukraine ‘miscalculation’

 


The Pentagon has established a new hotline with Russia’s ministry of defense to prevent “miscalculation, military incidents and escalation” in the region as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine advances, a US official told Reuters on Thursday.

The US says it has no troops in Ukraine but it and Nato allies in Europe are worried about potential spillover, including accidents, as Russia stages the largest assault on a European state since the second world war.

A view of a damaged building after shelling in Ukraine's second-biggest city of Kharkiv.
Russia’s war in Ukraine: complete guide in maps, video and pictures
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The US and its allies are also channeling millions of dollars’ worth of weaponry to Ukraine’s armed forces, which are using the arms against Russian troops, despite Moscow’s warnings against foreign interference.

“The Department of the Defense recently established a de-confliction line with the Russian ministry of defense on March 1 for the purposes of preventing miscalculation, military incidents, and escalation,” a senior US defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirming a move first reported by NBC.

The US military has successfully created hotlines with Russia in the past, including during the war in Syria, where Moscow intervened on the side of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

There, the US and Russia were waging parallel military campaigns, with the US focused on battling Islamic State.

The move is just the latest effort to lower soaring tension between the US and Russia, where the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – in a clear warning to the west – announced last weekend he was putting his nuclear forces on high alert.

Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was quoted on Wednesday warning that a third world war would be a nuclear conflict, remarks that added to growing unease.

The US military said on Wednesday it would postpone a scheduled test launch of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile.

“We recognize, at this moment of tension, how critical it is that both the United States and Russia bear in mind the risk of miscalculation and take steps to reduce those risks,” the Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said on Wednesday, announcing the move.



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