«З боку Росії знову з’являється спроба впливати на політичний і безпековий порядок в Європі», – наголосив Петр Фіала
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As Ukraine braces for a possible attack from Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday he wanted to convene a meeting of world powers to secure new security guarantees for his country as the current global system is no longer fit for the purpose.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Zelenskiy also called on NATO members to be honest about whether they wanted Ukraine to join the alliance or not.
The 44-year-old leader received a standing ovation before starting remarks in which he called on the world to learn the “terrible lessons from history” and chided the international community for what he said was the appeasing of Russia.
“The rules that the world agreed on decades ago no longer work. They do not keep up with new threats. Not effective for overcoming them. This is a cough syrup when you need a coronavirus vaccine,” he said.
“The security system is slow. It crashes again. Because of selfishness, self-confidence, irresponsibility of states at the global level,” he said.
Calling the global security architecture “almost broken,” Zelenskiy said he wanted to convene a meeting of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which includes Russia, and Germany and Turkey to provide new guarantees for Ukraine.
Zelenskiy said if the West was so sure that Russia was about to attack, it should impose sanctions on Moscow now, rather than threatening to impose them after an attack. Sanctions would be of no use once bombs started raining down on Ukraine, he said.
‘Attempts at appeasement’
“What do attempts at appeasement lead to?” Zelenskiy said, going on to refer to a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the same conference in 2007.
“Fifteen years ago, it was here that Russia announced its intention to challenge global security. What did the world say? Reconciliation. Result? At least the annexation of Crimea and aggression against my state,” he said.
The United States has warned that Russia could be poised to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine after massing tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine’s borders in recent weeks. Ukraine has played down the threat of a huge offensive but said it was ready for any possibility.
Russia has denied planning any sort of attack but has demanded its own security guarantees from NATO and the United States, which include a permanent bar on Ukraine joining NATO.
Zelenskiy said countries should be transparent about whether they wanted Ukraine, a country of 41 million on the European Union’s eastern borders, to join the EU and NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“If not all members of the alliance want to see us or all members of the alliance do not want to see us, be honest,” he said. “Open doors are good, but we need open answers, not closed questions for years.”
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За його словами, якщо консультації не відбудуться або не дадуть бажаного результату, то Україна вважатиме, що він не працює і усі пакетні рішення 1994 року поставлені під сумнів
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Shelling and mortar fire picked up tempo overnight Saturday in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, with the heavy bombardment spurring fears a major military clash is in the offing.
The head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic Saturday issued a mobilization order for able-bodied males to present themselves to “military commissars” to sign up with local militias. Men aged between 18 and 55 also are being barred from leaving the pro-Russian self-styled republic on the eastern edge of Ukraine.
And in another alarming development, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Saturday calling up army reservists for training and drills. Some analysts pointed out this is an annual event, but that it is normally conducted in April, not February. Yevhen Fedchenko, an Ukrainian academic who studies disinformation, says, “it’s one more tool to sow uncertainty.”
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported on Saturday more violations of an often-broken ceasefire agreed to in 2015 in the Donbas than a previous high on February 12.
Parts of the Donbas, which also includes the self-proclaimed republic of Luhansk, have been under de facto Russian occupation for the past eight years.
The OSCE reported more violations around Luhansk than Donetsk during the past two days, but even so, longtime observers say the shelling in and around Donetsk is the most intense they have seen in years.
On Friday the pro-Moscow separatist leaders, who are seen by Ukraine as puppets of the Kremlin, ordered a mass evacuation of civilians in posted videos, saying the Ukrainian army was planning an attack — an accusation vehemently denied by Kyiv.
According to the metadata of the videos, analyzed by experts, the broadcasts were prerecorded two days before, suggesting the evacuation, renewed shelling and other events, including an inexplicable car bombing, in Donbas are being orchestrated by the Kremlin, say Ukrainian officials, Western leaders and independent observers.
They accuse Moscow of building up a pretext for launching an offensive on Ukraine. Kremlin officials deny this, with Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Russian diplomats accusing Western leaders of “hysteria” and “alarmism.” Saturday, Russian authorities claimed a shell, allegedly fired by Ukraine, exploded on Russian territory near a house in the village of Mityakinskaya in the southern Rostov region.
Western intelligence officials say the evacuation and mobilization orders and intensifying artillery and mortar fire, which they blame on the Russian separatists, are consistent with warnings that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made at a midweek presentation to the United Nations Security Council, where he accused Moscow of preparing ‘false flag’ operations that could be blamed on Kyiv but are in fact ordered by the Kremlin and conducted by its own forces or proxies.
Russian President Putin has maintained a drumbeat of accusations against Ukraine, accusing it of genocide against ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and backing of armed proxies the same year in the Donbas was justified by the Kremlin on the grounds that it had to protect ethnic Russians. It was the same reason given for invading Georgia in 2008.
A Kremlin critic, Bill Browder, a British-American financier who was once based in Moscow, noted Friday that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tweeted word-for-word this week exactly the same remark he made on the eve of the Georgia invasion blaming the Kremlin’s foes for “provocative actions that have only intensified in the last day.”
However, independent analysts and military strategists are still split on whether what they describe as staged events in the Donbas are a prelude to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, something U.S. President Joe Biden warned about Friday, saying he is now convinced that Putin has decided to invade Ukraine in coming days and that Russian forces will launch an assault on the capital, Kyiv.
“As of this moment, I’m convinced he’s made the decision. We have reason to believe that,” Biden told reporters in Washington. His comments marked the first time the United States has said categorically Putin has made up his mind to invade.
Analyst and longtime Kremlin-watcher Dmitri Trenin of the Moscow Carnegie Center, a think tank, suspects the Kremlin is creating “strategic tension” with its actions in the Donbas along with planned nuclear-force drills Saturday and Sunday in Belarus, a Russian ally.
“Moscow’s objective appears to be coercing Ukraine into talking directly with Donetsk and Luhansk,” he tweeted Saturday, with the goal of intimidating Kyiv into accepting a 7-year-old peace deal, the Minsk Accord, which is highly unpopular in Ukraine and was signed when the Ukrainian army was suffering severe setbacks on the battlefield in Donbas.
Military strategist Edward Luttwak has adjusted his thoughts on the unfolding and dizzying events. Luttwak has been skeptical for weeks that the Kremlin is planning a deeper re-invasion of Ukraine, maintaining Russia didn’t have sufficient forces in place to carry out and sustain such a massive armed endeavor.
But with Western estimates of the Russian forces now deployed on three sides of Ukraine rising from 100,000 to 130,000 in January to 190,000 now, Luttwak tweeted Saturday: “Russia troops could reach 200K enough to control central Kyiv.” He noted, though, that that would mean leaving much of Ukraine in the hands of the decapitated Ukrainian regular forces and insurgents “willing to shoot at vulnerable Russians.”
However, he, too, suggests Putin likely favors using threats to subjugate Ukraine rather than invading.
With the crisis worsening rapidly, Britain Friday ordered its ambassador and the few remaining British diplomats in Kyiv to join the bulk of the staff who were relocated earlier in the month to Lviv in western Ukraine.
The Institute for the Study of War, a security think tank based in Washington, D.C., warns that Russia “will likely attack Ukraine before February 21, 2022. In its latest assessment the institute says: “The Kremlin has deployed sufficient military forces and set informational conditions to conduct offensive operations including limited incursions into unoccupied Ukraine, a comprehensive air and missile campaign, and large-scale mechanized drives on Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities.”
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«У вигадки російської дезінформації про нібито атаки з боку України ніхто не вірить», – заявив міністр
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Водопостачання поновлять, коли ремонтні бригади отримають гарантії безпеки, заявив голова Донецької ВЦА Павло Кириленко
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Еммануель Макрон заявив, що розмови відбудуться з метою уникнення «найгіршого сценарію» в Україні
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President Joe Biden says he is “convinced” that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, but that diplomacy is still on the table until that happens. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov
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В ефірі програми Савіка Шустера на телеканалі «Україна» пізно ввечері 18 лютого члена фракції ОПЗЖ вдарив журналіст Юрій Бутусов
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«На цей момент я думаю, що він ухвалив таке рішення, я маю підстави так говорити», – сказав американський президент
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Eight years after an uprising in Ukraine that led to the fall of the Russian-backed government, activists gather to mark that victory, saying they are now preparing for what may be their country’s next great struggle. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Kyiv.
Camera: Yan Boechat.
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China’s deepening ties with Russia will come with heavy geopolitical and economic consequences should the Ukraine crisis escalate, analysts say.
While the two powers have recently intensified their so-called comprehensive strategic partnership, Beijing has not offered its full support for Moscow’s military encirclement of its neighbor.
And there have been signs Beijing is worried that a Russia-Ukraine confrontation might not be in China’s national interest while its relationship with the West is deteriorating and its economy is slowing down.
The country called again Friday for a political resolution of the crisis. “Efforts should be made on the basis of the Minsk-2 agreement to properly treat the reasonable security concerns of all sides including Russia through dialogue and negotiation,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.
Debate on response
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Beijing is weighing how much it will support Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine. According to people with knowledge of the matter, the report said, China’s top leaders have debated how to respond to the crisis without hurting China’s own interests.
“I can’t see how China could support Russia in any sort of meaningful way and not do rather significant damage to the U.S.-China relationship,” said Michael Hunzeker, an assistant professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. He spoke to VOA in a telephone interview.
The U.S. has recently strongly criticized China’s support for Russia.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan accused China of giving a “wink and a nod” to a Russian invasion of Ukraine and said, “I believe that China will ultimately come to suffer consequences as a result of that in the eyes of the rest of the world, most notably in the eyes of our European partners and allies.”
Dustin Walker, a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA he believed that Europe would see China’s support for Putin’s brinksmanship on Ukraine as further evidence that China is a systemic rival, leading the region to “rethink its relationship with China.”
Testing ties
A possible Russian-Ukrainian confrontation would also test the relationship between Beijing and Moscow. If China, fearing repercussions for its own economy, were to comply with Western sanctions against Russia, Walker noted, it would be seen by Moscow as an unreliable partner.
Walker pointed out that in the joint statement issued after Xi and Putin met at the Beijing Olympics, China explicitly opposed NATO enlargement for the first time, but didn’t mention Ukraine.
That “has to raise the question whether Putin asked for something that he didn’t get from China,” Walker said.
Experts also note that China did not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, as it places fighting against separatism at the heart of its national security.
In Beijing’s diplomatic parlance, China and Russia maintain a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.” Russia remains the first and only major country to establish this type of partnership with China, said Craig Singleton, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
With China’s economy rapidly cooling, Xi will be focused, at least for the foreseeable future, on maintaining economic stability, which is something that Putin may or may not be inclined to respect as he pursues his interests in Ukraine, Singleton said in an email exchange with VOA. “China and Russia will find it incredibly difficult to synchronize their strategies,” he wrote.
War undermines stability
China also has important financial ties with Ukraine. It is Kyiv’s largest trading partner, and the two countries have had a strategic partnership since 2011. Ukraine joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure plan, even before Russia did.
While China is also the EU’s largest trading partner, the relationship is believed to be at its lowest point in decades. When Beijing began trying to sanction EU member state Lithuania over its policies toward Taiwan, the EU rallied to Vilnius’ defense, suing China for coercive trade practices at the World Trade Organization.
China exports almost 10 times as much to the European Union and Britain as it does to Russia, noted Singleton in a recent article published by Foreign Policy. He said Xi, in recent months, has personally stepped in to try to soothe relations with Europe because China needs enhanced ties to help it weather the current economic storm.
Some analysts believe that an extended showdown with Moscow over Ukraine could distract the United States from its vaunted “pivot to Asia,” leaving China more space to expand its influence in the region.
Hunzeker, the George Mason University professor, acknowledged that such a development would be advantageous to China. But, he said, “I don’t think we’re going to play into that sort of mistake.”
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Раніше в українській делегації в ТКГ заявили, що російська сторона відмовилася брати участь у позачерговому засіданні 18 лютого, яке ініціював Київ
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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday of Russian troops surrounding Ukraine, that it is “high time to seriously de-escalate.”
“I still think it will not happen,” he told Western leaders gathered in Germany for the Munich Security Conference about a possible Russian invasion of its southwestern neighbor. “But if it did, it would be catastrophic.”
Guterres has repeatedly called for de-escalation, diplomacy and dialogue, warning that the price of armed conflict in human suffering, destruction and damage to European and global security is too high to even contemplate.
He said that he is often asked if the world is experiencing a new Cold War.
“My answer is that the threat to global security now is more complex and probably higher than at that time,” the U.N. chief said, referring to the period from the end of World War II until the Soviet Union’s break up in 1991.
He noted that during the Cold War, there were mechanisms such as back channels to prevent crises.
“Today, many of those systems no longer exist and most of the people trained to use them are no longer here with us,” he noted. “So, miscommunication and miscalculation can make a minor incident between powers escalate out of control, causing incalculable harm.”
The United States and some Western allies say Moscow has amassed more than 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders. Russia dismisses claims it is planning an imminent invasion as Western hysteria.
The U.N. chief reminded leaders of their commitments under the organization’s charter to settle disputes by peaceful means and not to use force, or the threat of it, against another state.
“I urge all parties to be extremely careful with their rhetoric,” he added. “Public statements should aim to reduce tensions, not inflame them.”
Guterres added that geopolitical divides are rarely solved, but “they can and must be managed.”
Humanitarian operations continue in eastern Ukraine and the United Nation’s local and international staff and their dependents remain, despite the decision of several countries to evacuate their nationals.
The U.N. says there are 2.9 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and protection due to the eight-year-old conflict in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. The organization has appealed for $190 million this year to reach 1.8 million of the most vulnerable people with assistance.
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