Ukraine crisis: Petro Poroshenko says ceasefire could come Friday

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he would order a ceasefire on Friday for Ukraine’s armed forces battling pro-Russian separatists, paving the way for implementation of a “stage-by-stage peace plan” for his country.

Speaking on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Wales on Thursday, he added that the ceasefire was conditional on a planned meeting going ahead in Minsk on Friday of envoys from Ukraine, Russia and Europe’s OSCE security watchdog.

“At [7 a.m. ET on Friday], provided the (Minsk) meeting takes place, I will call on the General Staff to set up a bilateral ceasefire and we hope that the implementation of the peace plan will begin tomorrow,” Poroshenko said.

A senior pro-Russian rebel leader involved in talks with Kyiv said that if Ukrainian forces abide by the ceasefire, rebel forces might also do so, Russian news agency Interfax reported.

“If there is a real ceasefire on their part, then maybe we will also cease fire,” Andrei Purgin, a leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic who is due to hold preliminary peace talks with Kyiv in Minsk on Friday, told the agency. “We will see how they observe their ceasefire,”

Earlier, NATO’s top official accused Moscow outright on Thursday of attacking Ukraine as allied leaders gathered for a summit to buttress support for Kyiv and bolster defences against a Russia they now see as hostile for the first time since the Cold War.

“We are faced with a dramatically changed security environment,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters on arrival at the summit. “To the east, Russia is attacking Ukraine.” 

His statement stepped up Western rhetoric against Moscow and set the tone for a two-day meeting marked by a return to east-west confrontation 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s army is on heightened alert near the port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov near the Russian border, a Ukrainian military source said on Thursday, amid rumours that pro-Russian rebels are advancing towards the city.

Moscow denies it has troops in Ukraine but NATO says more than 1,000 Russian soldiers are operating in the country. Rasmussen also said NATO allies would consider seriously any request from Iraq for assistance in dealing with the growing insurgency by Sunni militants.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, the summit’s host, said pressure on Moscow would mount if it did not curtail military action which he branded unacceptable.

“What Russia needs to understand is if they continue with this approach in Ukraine, this pressure will be ramped up,” Cameron told BBC television, adding that U.S. and EU sanctions were already having an effect on the Russian economy.

Potential rift within NATO

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, whose forces have suffered a string of setbacks at the hands of Russian-backed separatists in the south and east of the country since last week, met with U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy just before the summit starts. 

‘Russia has ripped up the rulebook with its illegal, self-declared annexation of Crimea and its troops on Ukrainian soil threatening and undermining a sovereign nation state.’– British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama

The Ukrainian leader is looking for arms, training and intelligence support for his armed forces as well as political support against Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

However, his talk of reviving Ukraine’s bid to join the U.S.-led military alliance could reopen a rift within NATO.

Were Ukraine to join NATO, alliance members would be obliged to defend it with arms. As it is not a member, they have made clear they will not fight to protect it, but are taking mainly economic measures — U.S. and EU sanctions — against Russia. 

Under Article 5 of the NATO charter, an attack on one member state is viewed an an attack on the whole alliance. 

Obama reiterated his support for that principle Wednesday during a visit to Estonia, one of the newer NATO members set on edge by Russia’s provocations. He said the door to membership would remain open to states that meet NATO standards and “can make meaningful contributions to allied security,” but France and Germany remain opposed to admitting Kyiv.

A French official said NATO should contribute to easing tensions, not exacerbating them.

Russia warns against Ukraine joining NATO

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov underlined Moscow’s opposition to Ukraine joining NATO, warning that attempts to end the country’s non-aligned status could “derail all efforts aimed at initiating a dialogue with the aim of ensuring national security.”

After a week of defiant statements from Putin, Lavrov said Russia was ready for practical steps to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine and urged Kyiv and the rebels to heed ceasefire proposals put forward by Moscow on Wednesday.

Asked about Putin’s plan, Rasmussen said NATO welcomed efforts to find a peaceful solution but “what counts is what is actually happening on the ground and we are still witnessing, unfortunately, Russian involvement in destabilizing the situation in eastern Ukraine.” 

Ukraine crisis Sergei Lavrov

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Thursday that Ukraine’s entry into NATO could “derail all efforts” to ensure security in Eastern Europe. (Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

As more than a decade of NATO-led combat operations in Afghanistan draws to a close at year’s end, the 28-nation, U.S.-led military alliance is refocusing in part on its core task of defending its territory.

NATO leaders will set up a “spearhead” rapid reaction force, potentially including several thousand troops, that could be sent to a hotspot in as little as two days, officials say.

Eastern European NATO members, including Poland, have appealed to NATO to permanently station thousands of troops on their territory to deter any possible Russian attack.

But NATO members have spurned that idea, partly because of the expense and partly because they do not want to break a 1997 agreement with Russia under which NATO committed not to permanently station significant combat forces in the east.

No plans for military intervention in Ukraine

Instead, leaders will agree to pre-position equipment and supplies, such as fuel and ammunition, in eastern European countries with bases ready to receive the NATO rapid reaction force if needed.

NATO has said it has no plans to intervene militarily in Ukraine. It has focused on beefing up the defences of former Soviet bloc eastern European countries that joined the alliance in the last 15 years. The Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the only parts of the former Soviet Union itself to be admitted to NATO, fear Moscow could meddle in their affairs with the same rationale it applied in Ukraine — protecting Russians. 

Ukraine

Separatist rebels have made major strides in their offensive against Ukrainian government forces in recent days, drawing on what Ukraine and NATO says is ample support from the Russian military. (Sergei Grits/Associated Press)

In an article in The Times newspaper on Thursday, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote: “To the east, Russia has ripped up the rulebook with its illegal, self-declared annexation of Crimea and its troops on Ukrainian soil threatening and undermining a sovereign nation state.”

So far, Western military gestures of support for Ukraine have been mostly symbolic. NATO leaders are expected to approve a package of support for Kyiv, setting up trust funds worth around about $15.8 million US to improve Ukrainian military capabilities in areas such as logistics, command and control and cyber defence.

A dozen countries will join an exercise in Lviv, Ukraine, later this month, co-hosted by Ukraine and the U.S. Army.

Failed post-Cold War NATO-Russia cooperation

NATO officials say the alliance itself will not send the weapons that Ukraine is looking for but individual allies could do so if they wish.

NATO leaders will discuss the alliance’s relationship with Russia, which officials say has been fundamentally changed.

After the end of the Cold War, NATO and Russia sought cooperation in some security fields but NATO has concluded that this effort has failed, and for now at least, Russia is not a partner, a senior alliance official said.

“Russia has basically violated very fundamental agreements on the basis of which we have constructed peace and security in Europe for the last two decades,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

NATO has already suspended cooperation with Moscow following its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

France, which has faced fierce pressure from Washington and other NATO allies to halt the sale of two helicopter carriers to Russia, said on Wednesday it would not deliver the first of the warships for now because of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

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