Ukraine’s Poroshenko Gets Show of Support from NATO Leaders

Ukraine’s president received a show of support from Western leaders at a NATO summit on Thursday as a Kremlin peace offer failed to halt fighting the country’s east where pro-Russia rebels have been gaining the upper hand against Ukrainian troops.

The West has backed Kyiv with words and imposed economic sanctions against Moscow, but offered Ukraine only non-lethal military support after Russia annexed Crimea in March, and rebels, widely believed to be supported by Moscow, have risen up against Kyiv in the country’s east.

Poroshenko, even though Ukraine is not a NATO member, has been invited to the alliance’s summit in Wales, where he has already met with U.S. President Barack Obama, summit host and British prime minister David Cameron, Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Francois Hollande and other Western leaders.

“To the east, Russia has ripped up the rule book with its illegal, self-declared annexation of Crimea and its troops on Ukrainian soil threatening and undermining a sovereign nation state,” Obama and Cameron wrote in a joint newspaper editorial.
Russia denies its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, despite satellite imagery the West points to as proof of Russian troop and hardware movements in the country’s east.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday offered a seven-point peace plan for Ukraine but it was dismissed by NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who instead called on Moscow to use “genuine efforts” to help settle the conflict.

‘Party of war’

Meanwhile, Russia has accused the United States on Thursday of backing what it called the “party of war” in Kyiv and said it was counting on a response from the leadership in Ukraine and rebels in its east to a Kremlin cease-fire plan.

The surge in anti-Russian rhetoric that we have seen exactly when there is a very active effort to seek a political solution shows that the party of war in Kyiv has active external support, in this case from the United States,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference after talks with his Kyrgyz counterpart.

In contrast, he said, Russia was “doing and will do” everything in its power to secure peace in eastern Ukraine.

Lavrov was apparently referring to U.S. President Barack Obama’s remarks about NATO keeping the door open for new members.

Putin’s peace plan is to be discussed at talks in Friday in Minsk, Belarus, between representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian governments, pro-Russia rebels in Ukraine’s east and officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has criticized Putin’s plan saying it was a veiled effort “to destroy Ukraine and restore the Soviet Union.”

The European Union might hit Russia with a new round of sanctions this week over its role in the Ukraine conflict. Moscow has retaliated with its own punitive measures banning imports of some Western products.

Cease-fire, peace plan still possible

Meanwhile, President Poroshenko said he would order a cease-fire for Ukraine’s armed forces if Friday’s meeting in Minsk produces a peace plan.

“At 1400 local time (1100 GMT on Friday), provided the [Minsk] meeting takes place, I will call on the General Staff to set up a bilateral cease-fire, and we hope that the implementation of the peace plan will begin tomorrow,” Poroshenko said, speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit.

Rebels in eastern Ukraine signaled that they might follow suit.

“If there is a real truce on their part, then maybe we will also cease fire,” Russian news agency Interfax quoted senior pro-Russian rebel leader Andrei Purgin as saying.

“We will see how they observe their cease-fire,” he added, referring to Ukraine’s government troops.

Some material for this report came from Reuters.