Ukraine’s Poroshenko calls on West to keep pressure on Russia
Moscow/Kyiv (Alliance News) – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Thursday called on the West to keep pressuring Russia with sanctions because it was not complying with a ceasefire deal reached with Kremlin-backed separatists.
“We are facing external aggression from Russia. Russian troops have invaded Ukraine,” Poroshenko said during a visit in Moldova, local news agencies reported.
He added that while Kyiv was open for talks, western sanctions against Moscow should be kept in place. “Not to punish anybody, but in order to ensure that all sides fulfill their obligations,” he said.
Ukraine accuses Moscow of arming the separatists in eastern Ukraine and sending volunteers and regular soldiers across the border.
The United Nations said Thursday that 957 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since a ceasefire was declared in September.
“Respect for the ceasefire has been sporadic at best,” UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a report released in Geneva.
In total, 4,317 people have died and 9,921 were wounded since the conflict began in April, according to the report, which also said that serious human rights abuses in the region must be investigated.
“All parties need to make a far more whole-hearted effort to resolve this protracted crisis peacefully,” Zeid said.
Europe’s top security watchdog said Thursday that while the prospects are bleak, a peaceful settlement is the only solution.
“The Minsk agreements remain the indispensable basis for all present and future peace efforts. Consequently they should be faithfully respected and fully implemented,” Heidi Tagliavini, the special envoy for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said in Vienna.
Tagliavini warned that the crisis could have “a very dangerous fall-out all over Europe and beyond.”
Earlier the OSCE said that soldiers shot at members of its observer mission in territory controlled by government forces.
The observers were travelling in two vehicles west of Donetsk on Wednesday, when one of two soldiers on board a lorry fired two shots at them, the OSCE said in a statement.
The bullets struck close to one of the OSCE vehicles, hurting nobody.
The organization has come under criticism in Ukraine for not identifying military convoys in separatist-held areas as Russian and for allegedly disclosing the location of Ukrainian military formations.
The Ukrainian military blamed the separatists for the incident. “We have said more than once that the terrorists put Ukrainian forces’ markings on their vehicles to carry out provocations,” National Security Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said.
Russia condemned the shooting as unacceptable and put the blame on Ukraine.
“The host country is obliged to ensure the observer mission’s safety,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in Moscow, according to Russian news agencies.
Russia also warned the US against arming Ukraine.
“The US are one of the initiators of the conflict in Ukraine, and if they sell them arms, the conflict will proliferate,” Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council said according to Russian news agencies.
Patrushev was commenting on remarks by deputy National Security adviser Tony Blinken Wednesday in Washington.
Blinken, whom President Barack Obama has nominated as deputy Secretary of State, argued in a Senate hearing that indicators point to an imminent Russian offensive to carve out a land bridge to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by Russia in March.
“I believe we must be willing to raise the costs to Putin, which will only come through the provision of defensive, lethal military assistance to the government in Kyiv,” he said.
Also on Thursday, NATO said that its jets intercepted Russian aircraft more than 400 times this year.
The figure is a 50% increase from 2013, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during a visit to Estonia.
Copyright dpa
