Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday said the United States is “still gathering details” about the shelling of a kindergarten in eastern Ukraine, saying the incident is “certainly troubling.”
“We’ve said for some time the Russians might do something like this to justify a military conflict, so we’ll be watching this closely,” he noted.
While Ukraine's military and Russian-backed rebels both pointed fingers, Kyiv said the shelling looks like a “provocation,” according to Reuters.
A senior Ukrainian government source said the shelling at the line of contact with Russian-backed separatist forces went beyond the scale of ceasefire violations routinely reported throughout the conflict.
"It is not typical. It looks a lot like a provocation," the source told Reuters.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia was "seriously concerned" about the reports of escalation.
A Reuters photographer in the town of Kadiivka, in Ukraine's rebel-held Luhansk region, heard the sound of some artillery fire from the direction of the line of contact, but was not able to determine the details of the incident.
The separatists accused government forces of opening fire on their territory four times in the past 24 hours.
Kyiv accused the rebels of firing shells at several locations, including some that struck a kindergarten and others that hit a school where pupils had to flee to the cellar. (Reuters)
Austin, who held a press conference in Brussels, noted that while Russia claims to be withdrawing some troops, the U.S. is seeing the opposite.
“We see them add to the more than 150,000 troops that they already have on that border even in the last couple of days,” he said. “We see them fly in more combat and support aircraft, we see them sharpen their readiness in the Black Sea. We even see them stocking up their blood supplies.”
From experience, Austin said this doesn’t happen “for no reason,” and definitely would not occur if you are serious about heading home.
.@SecDef: The Russians say they are withdrawing some of those
— Department of Defense ???? (@DeptofDefense) February 17, 2022
forces, now that exercises are complete. But we don't see that. #WeAreNATO pic.twitter.com/MZAdCDPv00
Asked by a reporter how American intelligence on this can be trusted, Austin said the U.S. has been transparent about their findings and shared that information with allies and partners.