The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Monday (29) that Russia is taking advantage of a moment of distraction from Western powers to increase pressure on his country, asked the international community for help against this threat and he denied that Kiev plans a military offensive in the Donbass region, one of Moscow’s excuses for massing troops on the border.
“What we see now is very serious. Russia deployed a large military force in regions close to the Ukrainian border. This includes tanks, artillery, electronic warfare systems, air and naval forces. There are more than 40 tactical battalion groups totaling 115,000 soldiers heading towards Ukraine, including the forces present in the occupied territories of Crimea and Donbass,” Kuleba said at a news conference.
The chancellor pointed out that Russian forces have been widely present in the Ukrainian border region since last year – with all the infrastructure transported during last European spring, an offensive could be carried out overnight – and for now Moscow refuses to explain their military actions and movements in a transparent and trustworthy way.
He also stressed that the Russian government ignores invitations to resume dialogues in the Normandy format, diplomatic summit between Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France to discuss the confrontation in the Donbass region, where Ukrainian and separatist forces supported by Moscow have been fighting since 2014.
In Kuleba’s opinion, Vladimir Putin’s government is doubling up at this moment because it “sees an opportunity.” “Our main European allies, Germany and France, are focused on their domestic issues. Germany held elections recently and France will have one soon. Russia’s Nord Stream 2 geopolitical pipeline project is in the certification phase. Vladimir Putin thinks the West is weak and indecisive, especially now,” he argued.
“He can be confident that this is the right time to shift the balance of power in the region to his own benefit,” he added, rebutting Russia’s accusation that Ukraine was preparing a military strike in the Donbass region: “We are committed in seeking political and diplomatic solutions to the conflict”.
“Of course, this is not just about Ukraine, but Russia’s interests in Europe as a whole. We saw how Russia uses natural gas as a weapon to aggravate the energy crisis in Europe. As it uses immigrants as weapons to heighten tensions on the Belarus border with Lithuania and Poland and, by the way, it also forces us to allocate more resources and more border guard powers to the Belarus border, which is a thousand kilometers across extension,” said Kuleba.
“At worst, Russia could try to undermine the entire post-Cold War security architecture in Europe and redraw borders by force again, as it did in 2008 in Georgia and in 2014 in Ukraine, when it occupied Crimea and started a war in Donbass,” he warned.
Ukraine proposes political, economic and military deterrence
To curb the Russian escalation, Ukraine has proposed to its partners in the West a deterrent package at three levels: political, with emphatic declarations of support for Ukraine; economic, with sanctions on Russia; and military, deepening cooperation with Kiev in the security and defense sectors.
“This week, I will attend the NATO (Western military alliance) ministerial meeting in Riga and the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) meeting in Stockholm,” Kuleba reported. “I will inform our partners about the security situation in the region, mobilize more support for Ukraine and discuss very concrete steps that can be taken to deter Russia.”
The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, said he had received information that an attempted coup d’état in the country was being prepared, with the participation of Russians, which would be launched this week. Russia denies it.
This Monday, Kuleba pointed out that when it comes to hybrid warfare, external military pressure is accompanied by domestic destabilization of the country. Therefore, Ukraine is “on the lookout” of a possible coup attempt.
“If Russia decides to resort to the last measure of an offensive military operation, it will undoubtedly be preceded or accompanied by bold and systematic attempts to destabilize Ukraine by all available means”, argued the chancellor.
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