Russia rejects U.S. options it is in search of pretext to invade Ukraine
Russia’s prime diplomat on Monday angrily rejected U.S. allegations that it was making ready a pretext to invade Ukraine as Russian troops have remained concentrated close to the border.
The White Home mentioned Friday that U.S. intelligence officers had concluded that Russia had already deployed operatives to rebel-controlled jap Ukraine to hold out acts of sabotage there and blame them on Ukraine in a “false-flag operation” to create a pretext for attainable invasion.
Chatting with reporters on Monday, Russian International Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the U.S. declare as “whole disinformation.”
Response needed this week
He reaffirmed that Russia expects a written response this week from the U.S. and its allies to Moscow’s request for binding ensures that NATO is not going to embrace Ukraine or every other ex-Soviet nations, or station its forces and weapons there.
Washington and its allies firmly rejected Moscow’s calls for throughout final week’s Russia-U.S. negotiations in Geneva and a associated NATO-Russia assembly in Brussels, which have been held as an estimated 100,000 Russian troops with tanks and different heavy weapons are massed close to Ukraine, in what the West fears is perhaps a prelude to an invasion.
A delegation of U.S. senators is visiting Ukraine to emphasise American assist for the nation.
“Our bipartisan congressional delegation sends a transparent message to the worldwide neighborhood: the US stands in unwavering assist of our Ukrainian companions to defend their sovereignty and within the face of persistent Russian aggression,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, mentioned in a press release.
Talking Monday on a go to to Kyiv, German International Minister Annalena Baerbock warned that “any additional escalation would carry a excessive worth for the Russian regime — financial, political and strategic” and emphasised the necessity to proceed negotiations.
“We’re ready to have a critical dialogue with Russia, as a result of diplomacy is the one option to defuse this extremely harmful state of affairs in the meanwhile,” she mentioned.
Baerbock mentioned Germany has supplied to ship cybersecurity specialists to Ukraine to assist examine final week’s cyberattacks, which Ukrainian authorities blamed on Russia. On the identical time, she famous that Germany hasn’t modified its refusal to supply it with weapons.
“We made clear that we’ll do every thing to keep away from escalating the disaster,” she mentioned.
Ukrainian officers have warned that Russia may launch an assault from numerous instructions, together with from the territory of its ally Belarus.
Plans for army drills
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has more and more relied on the Kremlin’s assist amid Western sanctions over a brutal crackdown on home protests, mentioned that Russia and Belarus will maintain large army drills subsequent month.
Lukashenko mentioned the manoeuvres can be carried out on Belarus’s western border and in addition within the nation’s south the place it borders Ukraine.
Russia has denied having plans to assault its neighbour and in flip accused the Ukrainian management of hatching plans to make use of drive to reclaim management of rebel-held territories. Ukrainian authorities have denied it.
Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 after the ouster of Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly chief, Viktor Yanukovych, and additionally threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in jap Ukraine. Greater than 14,000 folks have been killed in practically eight years of preventing between the Russia-backed rebels and Ukrainian forces within the nation’s industrial heartland, referred to as Donbas.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Moscow will take unspecified “military-technical measures” if the West stonewalls its calls for.
In an interview with CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton, NATO Secretary Normal Jens Stoltenberg mentioned that whereas there’s an pressing want for diplomacy to resolve the disaster in jap Europe, it is as much as Russia, not Ukraine, to point out flexibility. 8:40
Deputy International Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who led the Russian delegation on the talks with the U.S. in Geneva, mentioned final week that he would “neither verify nor exclude” the potential for Russia sending army property to Cuba and Venezuela if the U.S. and its allies do not curtail their army actions on Russia’s doorstep.
U.S. nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan has dismissed the feedback as bluster.
Requested Monday about the potential for Russian missile deployment to Cuba and Venezuela, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov informed reporters that “Russia is considering how to make sure its safety within the context of the present state of affairs.”