The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

US warns that Russia may attack Ukraine "shortly"

2022-01-19T20:01:04.734Z


Blinken visits Kiev and promises "relentless" diplomacy to prevent a new aggression from the Kremlin, while warning of a possible increase in Russian troops on the border


The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, has warned this Wednesday that Russia “has plans” to further increase its troops along the Ukrainian borders and that it could initiate “shortly” a new military aggression against the strategic country of Ukraine. Eastern Europe. At the start of a diplomatic tour aimed at dissuading Moscow from crossing red lines, Blinken traveled to Kiev to show his support for the government of Volodymyr Zelensky and renewed his promise of severe sanctions in the event of another Russian invasion. While the Kremlin again demanded from NATO and the US guarantees that the Atlantic Alliance will never admit Ukraine or Georgia, Blinken, who will meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Friday, warned the Ukrainians that they must prepare for difficult days.

Ukraine has been at war for eight years in the Donbas region against pro-Russian separatists, who receive the support of Russia, which already in 2014 annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in a referendum not recognized by the international community. Now, the concentration of some 100,000 Russian soldiers along the borders with Ukraine, to which the military and heavy weapons continue to be added, together with the high dialectical threats from the Kremlin, has unleashed a huge security crisis in Eastern Europe. “We know that there are [Russian] plans to increase that [military] force even more in a very short time,” Blinken said in Kiev. "And that gives [Russian President Vladimir] Putin the ability, also in a very short time, to take more aggressive action against Ukraine."

Ukraine, which along with Georgia received the invitation to join NATO in 2008 -although in the absence of reforms and consensus that membership is really a long way off-, has asked its Western allies for more defense support, harsh sanctions against Russia and also support on the ground. Blinken, who met with President Zelensky and the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, renewed the promise of retaliation against Moscow, although without specifying, and also guaranteed that Washington will continue to provide Ukraine with defense support with a new package capital of 200 million dollars (about 176 million euros). However, the US will not provide Kiev with offensive weapons, nor will it provide direct military force. “To take very fast steps, to modernize the Army, we need help here,It especially helps in these times, difficult times,” Zelensky asked.

Russian armored vehicles arrived in Belarus on Tuesday for joint maneuvers scheduled for early February. HANDOUT (AFP)

The atmosphere is increasingly somber and tense, but Washington and Kiev insisted that there is still a stretch of diplomatic path to explore. "All the countries of the European Union must understand that, although the price of dissuading Russia is high, the cost of stopping a new war will be higher," stressed Foreign Minister Kuleba, who spoke by phone with the head of the EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, on the economic sanctions that the Union could impose on Moscow and additional support for Ukraine. Russia, which is experiencing the worst moment in its relations with the European Union, has deliberately removed Brussels from diplomatic talks and has tried to water down its role in the debates on the security architecture in the Old Continent, alleging that it prefers to deal mainly with Washington.

This Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron, who along with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel unified the most pragmatic tone with Moscow, asked the community club to draw up a "security and stability" plan to ease tensions with Russia. "We should build it among the Europeans, then share it with our allies in the framework of NATO and then propose it for negotiation with Russia," Macron said in Strasbourg in a speech to the European Parliament.

The United States, meanwhile, is seeking against the clock not only to de-escalate the crisis, but to unify a contingency plan and also agree on a package of possible financial sanctions that would be imposed on Russia in the event of a new aggression against Ukraine.

A unified approach that Blinken took pains to highlight in Kiev and that may have found a loose verse with Macron's proposal.

"The strength of our diplomacy, our deterrence and any response to Moscow's aggression demands unity among allies and partners, as well as within Ukraine," the US secretary of state said before traveling to Berlin, where he will meet on Thursday. with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and with the Foreign Ministers of Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

Ukrainian soldiers carried out maneuvers with US Javelin missiles, on January 12 in the Donetsk region.AP

Washington and Brussels also accuse Russia of exacerbating the crisis for no reason and making impossible demands. In December, Putin proposed to NATO and the US a draft treaty that includes not only the commitment that the Alliance (of which Spain is a member) renounce new partners among the countries of the former USSR (such as Georgia and Ukraine) it also demands that NATO and Washington halt all military activity in Central Europe (where it has no bases, but does deploy multi-national battalions in rotations in Poland and the Baltics), Central Asia and the Caucasus. Moscow now waves the threat of "deploying" military equipment if it does not receive a written response to these demands. A document that Blinken, who promised "relentless" diplomacy with Moscow, confirmed that he would not deliver to Lavrov on Friday at their meeting in Geneva.

Putin, who aspires and maneuvers to maintain his sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space and who has repeated that Ukraine and Russia are one people, united by substantial ethnic and historical ties, accuses NATO of threatening Russia's security and expanding towards its borders. This Wednesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov, who led diplomatic talks with his Western partners last week that ended in a dead end, assured that the situation is "critical."

In a discussion forum in Moscow, Riabkov accused the Atlantic Alliance of using Ukraine as a "lever of pressure" against Russia and of "strengthening" the conflict. “I am sure there is no risk of a full-scale war breaking out in Europe or elsewhere. We have no intention of attacking, organizing an offensive or invading Ukraine," Ryabkov said. The intelligence services of the United States and Ukraine believe that the threat may come surreptitiously and maintain that Moscow may be preparing a false flag operation in the form of a provocation in Donbas - where there are constant violations of the ceasefire agreement and the conflict is increasingly volatile—,to be able to openly enter the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk to "defend" the around one million people who have received Russian passports in recent years.

Follow all the international information on

Facebook

and

Twitter

, or in

our weekly newsletter

.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-01-19

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.