Image via Azov Batallion, Ucrainie.
By Wording OD
Russia is warning that Kiev may launch a new offensive against supporters of the self-proclaimed republics in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. Moscow is urging Paris and Berlin to put pressure on the Ukrainian authorities to prevent a potential renewal of violence.
As hostilities threaten to break out again in eastern Ukraine, Moscow
is warning that Kiev may be on the verge of launching a new offensive
against the self-proclaimed rebel republics in the region.
At a meeting with the German and French ambassadors on July 6,
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told them that
heightened tensions in the Donbass indicate that the Ukrainian troops
are preparing for action to try and take back territory occupied by
Russian-backed rebels as part of a two-year-old conflict with the
central government in Kiev.
Karasin urged the two ambassadors, who represent the two countries
whose leaders – alongside the presidents of Russia and Ukraine – form
the four-party negotiating group for resolving the Donbass crisis, “to
exercise their influence to put pressure on Kiev in order to prevent a
military scenario…”
On the following day, the situation in eastern Ukraine was discussed
in a telephone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and
his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama.
This time, a similar appeal was made to the Russian leader in
relation to the rebel regimes in Donetsk and Lugansk, which enjoy
Moscow’s patronage. Obama asked Putin to “take measures to end the significant uptick in fighting in eastern Ukraine.”
Fears regarding a dramatic increase in hostilities in the Donbass
were voiced not only in Russia but in Ukraine too. Kiev linked this
eventuality to the Kremlin’s desire to destabilize the situation in
Ukraine as a whole and in the Donbass in particular. Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Andrei Parubiy said that Moscow may be tempted to do it against the backdrop of “the U.S. election and the crisis in the EU.”