The international community is preparing its response against Russia Following Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed pro-Russian republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, on Ukrainian territory and deploy the army.
For the international community, the Russian president’s decision means burying the Minsk agreements for a peaceful settlement in the Donbas region, in addition to an attack against the territorial integrity of a state and a forced modification of the current borders in Europe.
For his part, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has accused Russia of violating the territorial integrity of their country by recognizing the independence of the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk stressing that the Russian president’s decision means his unilateral renunciation of the Minsk Peace Agreements and the decisions adopted with Germany and France in the Normandy format.
However, Russia’s representative to the UN Security Council has argued that his country “does not want a bloodbath in Donbas” and has ensured that there is “an unfounded panic at the invasion of Ukraine” in Western countries. “We are still open to diplomacy, to a diplomatic solution (to the conflict), but we no longer have the intention of allowing a new bloody massacre,” said the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vasili Nebenzia, according to the Russian news agency. TASS.
Nebenzia has justified the Russian recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk by arguing that Ukraine was “talking to their own citizens in the east of the country with a language of cannons, shooting, threats and shelling.” “Again and again, we strongly asked Kiev to listen to the aspirations of the people living in Donbas and the Russian-speaking residents of the country to respect their completely legitimate desire to use their mother tongue and teach their children in that language”, he added in this regard.
Likewise, the Russian ambassador stressed that “now it is important to focus on how to avoid war and force Ukraine to stop bombing and the provocations against Donetsk and Lugansk” and clarified that, despite this, Russia “remains open to diplomacy”. “Kiev not only returned very quickly to militant rhetoric and continued to bomb civilians, but also did everything possible to sabotage and eventually destroy the Minsk agreements,” he defended.
The UN Security Council session ended without any agreement and without the bloc of countries allied with the United States announcing the sanctions promised against Russia, which will supposedly materialize in the next few hours.
The European Union (EU) has already announced that will react with “sanctions” against those “involved” in the “illegal” decision of Putin, although at the moment they are not specified. The announcement was made in a joint statement by the President of the European Council and the European Commission, Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen, respectively.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported this Monday that more than 3,000 ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine, where the line of contact between government troops and pro-Russian separatist militias is located. These figures are much higher than the average number of incidents recorded in the last seven days. Since it began in 2014, fighting in the area has caused more than 14,000 dead.
Source: Lasexta
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