© Reuters
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US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed to meet again next week as President Joe Biden prepares to hold new talks today with NATO leaders – including Eastern European ones.
The meeting follows an exchange of fire between separatists, prompting Biden to say Russia is facing an invasion of Ukraine. Both he and other NATO leaders have warned that the shelling could be an attempt to create an invasion.
Weeks ago, the United States announced that, according to intelligence, Moscow, which has amassed troops near Ukraine, could fabricate an incident that would prompt it to invade.
Blinken even launched a chemical attack
Russia denies any such plans, but the West has questioned the announced partial withdrawal of troops and demanded evidence, and the United States says there are thousands of new ones sent near Ukraine.
Yesterday Russia expelled Washington’s deputy ambassador to Moscow. Shortly afterwards, Biden said his administration “has reason to believe” that the country is involved in such an operation “in order to have an excuse to enter”.
Blinken also told the UN Security Council last night that Russia plans to fabricate an event that it could describe as “ethnic cleansing or genocide”, but it is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. staging. Some time ago, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that the United States had moved chemical weapons to Ukrainian territory.
“All indications are that they are ready to enter Ukraine, to invade Ukraine. My feeling is that it will happen in the next few days.”
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President of the United States
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Blinken list possible occasions such as “terrorist” bombing in Russia, fictitious discovery of mass graves, staged drone attack on civilians “or fake – or even real – chemical weapons attack”.
The shelling
Tensions have been heating up since yesterday afternoon, when Kiev accused Russian-backed separatists of hitting a manger in the town of Stanitsa Luhanska. Photos distributed by world agencies show a hole in the wall of a room in a kindergarten, for which the Ukrainian authorities blame forces of the self-proclaimed “people’s republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk.
However, the separatists claim that the shelling was started by the Ukrainian army. Such mutual accusations of violating the truce are not uncommon, but many Western leaders are worried about the risks of war. In LNR they claimthat Kiev seeks to escalate the conflict in Donbass.
A total of four people were injured in the attack in the kindergarten (where there were children, but they were not injured) and in other cases of shelling – a total of 25 settlements along the line of demarcation between the forces of Kiev and LPR and DNR, including near Donetsk and Gorlovka. Ukraine insists it adheres to the Minsk agreements and does not attack separatists in Donbas.
Talks continue
Today, the US president talks with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Poland, Romania, the EU and NATO. Vice President Kamala Harris is in Munich for the annual security conference. There will also be German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Read more about the forum here.
The State Department announced last night that Blinken had accepted an invitation from Lavrov for a new meeting only if there was no invasion of Ukraine in the meantime. Russia’s top diplomat, meanwhile, has reacted to allegations in the US media that there is a new date for the invasion – February 20 (after appearing in Politico and other media last week on February 16), saying there would be a withdrawal. of Russia from Belarus due to the end of the exercises there.
Russia yesterday responded to the US response to its security concerns over allowing Ukraine to join NATO (an issue that is not currently on the agenda) and limiting its military presence in Eastern Europe to pre-1997 borders. With the new answer Moscow has modified some of the demands made earlierand at the same time announced the possibility of a diplomatic solution and threatened to use “military technical means” if her demands were not taken into account.
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