War fears mount as Moscow evacuates Kyiv embassy

Ukraine mobilised its military reserves and Russia evacuated its Kyiv embassy on Wednesday as fears reached fever pitch of a full-scale conflict breaking out in eastern Europe.

Kremlin chief president Vladimir Putin has defied an avalanche of international sanctions to put his forces on stand-by to occupy and defend two rebel-held areas of eastern Ukraine.

 

In response, Kyiv’s president Volodymyr Zelensky  has put Ukraine’s more than 2,00,000 reservists on notice that they will receive summons to return to their units.

Ukraine also urged its approximately three million citizens living in Russia to leave and prepared to declare a national state of emergency.

‘We are united in believing that the future of European security is being decided right now, here in our home, in Ukraine,’ Zelensky said during a joint media appearance with the visiting leaders of Poland and Lithuania.

‘Ukraine needs security guarantees. Clear, specific, and immediate,’ Zelensky said, adding, ‘I believe that Russia must be among those countries giving clear security guarantees.’

A Ukrainian soldier died Wednesday in a shelling attack near the frontline with the Moscow-backed separatist east, the armed forces said, as fears mount of a Russian invasion.

Ukraine’s army did not specify the location of the attack, saying only that one soldier ‘suffered fatal injuries’ and another was wounded in the shelling.

Nine Ukrainian soldiers have died since the beginning of the year, wih six of them killed in intensifying clashes over the past four days, according to an AFP tally based on official sources.

Rebel leaders have only claimed casualties among civilians but not their fighters.

The United States told the UN General Assembly Wednesday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could displace as many as five million people.

‘If Russia continues down this path, it could — according to our estimates — create a new refugee crisis, one of the largest facing the world today,” said America’s ambassador to the world body, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

The UN chief and Ukraine’s foreign minister told the General Assembly in New York Wednesday that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia would have a devastating global impact.

United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres warned the body that ‘our world is facing a moment of peril’ over Ukraine’s crisis with Russia.

‘If the conflict in Ukraine expands, the world could see a scale and severity of need unseen for many years,’ he said.

Guterres called for ‘all sides to allow safe and unimpeded access by humanitarian agencies, including in non-government controlled areas of eastern Ukraine.’

He called Russia’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states as ‘violations of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine’.

‘It is time for restraint, reason and de-escalation,’ Guterres said, stressing there was no room for actions or statements that would ‘take this dangerous situation over the abyss’.

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba warned diplomats that ‘the beginning of a large-scale war in Ukraine will be the end of the world order as we know it’.

He pleaded with the United Nations to hold Moscow accountable for what he called its attack on ‘the core principles of international law’.

Ukraine is coming under a ‘massive’ cyberattack, a senior minister said on Wednesday, with the main websites of the government and foreign ministry refusing to open.

Deputy prime minister Mykailo Fyodorov said the attack began in the late afternoon and affected several banks as well as official websites, without specifying its origin.

Western capitals say Russia has amassed 1,50,000 troops in combat formations on Ukraine’s borders with Russia, Belarus and Russian-occupied Crimea and on warships in the Black Sea.

Ukraine has around 2,00,000 military personnel and Wednesday’s call up could see up to 2,50,000 reservists aged between 18 and 60 receive their mobilisation papers.

Moscow’s total forces are much larger — around a million active duty personnel — and have been modernised and re-armed in recent years.

But Ukraine has received advanced anti-tank weapons and some drones from NATO members. More have been promised as the allies try to deter a Russian attack or at least make it costly.

Shelling has intensified in recent days between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists, and civilians living near the front are fearful.

Dmitry Maksimenko, a 27-year-old coal miner from government-held Krasnogorivka, said that he was shocked when his wife came to tell him that Putin had recognised two Russian-backed separatist enclaves.

‘She said, “Have you heard the news?”. How could I have known? There’s no electricity never mind internet. I don’t know what is going to happen next, but to be honest, I’m afraid,’ he said.

In a Russian village around 50 kilometres from the border, AFP reporters saw military equipment including rocket launchers, howitzers and fuel tanks mounted on trains stretching for hundreds of metres.

Cuba on Wednesday urged the United States and NATO to respond ‘seriously and realistically’ to Russian demands for ‘security guarantees’ and called for a diplomatic solution as tensions over Ukraine reach fever pitch.

Havana in a statement pointed to what it said was the United States’ ‘determination to impose the progressive expansion of NATO towards the borders of the Russian Federation’ which it said constituted ‘a threat to the national security’ of its ally.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a phone call on Wednesday that Turkey would not recognise any move against Ukraine’s sovereignty, and warned against a military conflict.

Erdogan told Putin that Turkey would ‘not recognise any step against Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ his office said, adding that this was Ankara’s ‘principled approach’.

President Vladimir Putin has defied an avalanche of international sanctions and put his forces on stand-by to occupy and defend two rebel-held areas of eastern Ukraine.

The EU will hold an emergency summit in Brussels late Thursday on Russia’s ‘aggressive actions’ against Ukraine, European Council president Charles Michel announced in a letter to the bloc’s leaders.

‘It is important that we continue to be united and determined and jointly define our collective approach and actions,’ he said.

‘Therefore, I would like to invite you for a special European Council (summit) on Thursday on February 24, which will take place in person in Brussels and start at 20:00 (19:00 GMT).’

Washington and Britain say Russia’s force is poised to strike Ukraine and trigger the most serious war in Europe for decades, but Putin says he is open to negotiation — within limits.

Russia has demanded that Ukraine be forbidden from ever joining the NATO alliance and that US troops pull out from Eastern Europe.

‘The interests of Russia, the security of our citizens, are non-negotiable for us,’ Putin declared, in a video address to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day, a public holiday.

On Tuesday, the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house, gave him unanimous approval to deploy troops to two breakaway Ukrainian regions now recognised by Moscow as independent, Donetsk and Lugansk.

Russia said it had established diplomatic relations ‘at the level of embassies’ with the separatist stateless, which broke away from Kyiv in 2014 in a conflict that has cost more than 14,000 lives.

Moscow also said it would evacuate diplomatic personnel from Ukraine to ‘protect their lives.’ An AFP reporter saw several families leaving the embassy with suitcases.

Speaking to journalists, Putin on Tuesday set out a number of stringent conditions if the West wanted to de-escalate the crisis, saying Ukraine should drop its NATO ambition and become neutral.

US president Joe Biden later announced tough new sanctions targeting financial institutions and Russia’s ‘elites’ for ‘beginning’ an invasion of Ukraine, but said there was still time to avoid war.

The Russian foreign ministry on Wednesday said it was preparing a ‘strong response’ to Biden.

It said this would be ‘well-calibrated and sensitive for the American side’.

Australia, Britain, Japan and the European Union have all also announced sanctions.

Germany has said it is halting certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia.

Kremlin officials have responded scornfully to the sanctions, and observers point out that energy-rich Russia has huge reserves of $639 billion and an $182-billion sovereign wealth fund to see it through a crisis.

Putin’s plans remain unclear, but Western officials have been warning for weeks he has been preparing an all-out invasion of Ukraine, a move that could spark a catastrophic war in Europe.

The White House signalled it no longer believes Russia is serious about avoiding conflict, secretary of state Antony Blinken cancelling a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov scheduled for Thursday.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Putin said Moscow had recognised the independence of Ukraine’s separatist regions within their administrative borders, including territory still controlled by Kyiv — raising the spectre of a clash.

He added that Western-brokered peace agreements on Ukraine’s conflict no longer existed and stressed that the deployment of Russian troops would ‘depend on the specific situation… on the ground’.

On a visit to Berlin, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, ‘When or how should we believe what president Putin says? I don’t know if anyone knows.’

 

AFP