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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
National
Chris Hughes in Ukraine & Kieren Williams

UK advises against any travel to Belarus as car bomb explodes in east Ukraine

The UK has advised against any travel to Belarus after a car bomb exploded in East Ukraine as tensions continue to ratchet up despite Russian promises of deescalation.

Russian-backed separatists in the area said that a car had been blown up near their government building in the city of Donetsk, the TASS news agency reported.

The power explosion was first reported in the city of Donetsk last night.

It was a suspected car bomb and followed warnings of terrorist attacks.

This week UK defence committee chair Tobias Ellwood warned Russia would use false flag operations like plotting terror attacks inside Ukraine to create a pretext to invade.

The car was blown up in the car park around 7pm local time (Life Shot / east2west news)

This was the latest in a number of attempts in the west to head off Russian plans in the region by publicly announcing them.

In recent weeks, despite growing tensions, Russia made the announcement that after the completion of military exercises it would be moving troops away from the border.

It is believed as many as 130,000 troops are currently stationed there.

The burning wreckage after the explosion (Social media / east2west news)

These exercises in Belarus, Russia's close ally and subordinate, were believed by many to be a pretext to get troops and resources ready to invade.

However, they are due to end Sunday but Moscow has not said at which point would the troops return to Russia after the drills.

The US has claimed that this is "false" and instead of removing troops from the border, in recent days they have added around 7,000.

This came hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC: "We don't see any troop withdrawal yet, we just heard about it."

Intelligence officer turned president Vladimir Putin (Sergei Guneyev/POOL/TASS)

The crisis in Ukraine has been brewing since around 2013, after attempts to bring the country closer to the rest of Europe were stopped by the then president Viktor Yanukovych, his actions led to widespread protests which led to his ousting.

His ousting in turn caused protests and unease in the pro-Russian areas of Ukraine and a few months later Russia annexed Crimea.

In the present day, a number of warnings have been issued that another Russian invasion is imminent.

One Whitehall source said that any invasion would lead to a "horrendous" conflict.

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