Russia has said it will relocate naval exercises off the coast of Ireland after Dublin expressed concerns about the dispute with the West over NATO enlargement and concerns that Russia was preparing for an invasion. Ukraine.
The exercise was scheduled for February 3 to 8, 240 kilometers (150 miles) southwest of Ireland in international waters and in Ireland’s exclusive economic zone. Ireland is a member of the European Union of 27 countries, but not a member of NATO.
This week, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Covenant objected to the war games, saying: “This is not the time to step up military activity and tensions in the context of Ukraine. The fact that they choose to do so in the west. border, if you will, from the European Union, off the coast of Ireland, we think is undesirable. ”
On Saturday, the Russian embassy in Ireland published a report on Facebook by Ambassador Yuri Filatov saying the exercise would be relocated outside the Irish economic zone “in order not to disrupt fishing activities”.
Such a decision was a rare concession in the face of growing tensions over Russia’s accumulation of some 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, and its demands for a NATO commitment to prevent Ukraine from joining the alliance, halting NATO’s deployment at Russia’s border and retreating. . Its forces are from Eastern Europe.
The United States and NATO formally rejected these demands this week, although Washington has identified areas for discussion, hoping there could be a way to avoid war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not made any public statements about the Western reaction. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it did not leave much room for agreement, although he also said that Russia did not want a war.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Friday that Putin could use any part of his power to seize Ukrainian cities and “important regions” or carry out “coercive or provocative political actions” such as recognizing separatist territories within Ukraine.
Two regions in eastern Ukraine have been under Russian-backed insurgency since 2014, after Russia annexed Ukraine to Crimea.
The Russian legislature is urging the people of these areas of Ukraine to join the Russian army, which shows that Moscow continues to try to integrate these areas as much as possible. Viktor Vodolatsky said on Saturday that residents of the rebel-held areas of eastern Ukraine feared attacks by Ukrainian forces and that those with Russian passports would be welcomed into the Russian army.
“If Russian citizens living in (territories) want to join the Russian armed forces, they will be registered and released by the Rostov Oblast Military Commissariat,” Vodolatsky, vice-chairman of the parliamentary committee for relations with neighbors, told TASS.
Russia has issued passports to more than 500,000 people in rebel-held areas. Vodolatsky said the conscripts would be serving in Russia, but this left them free to join any further forces of invasion.
A senior official in President Joe Biden’s administration said the United States welcomed Lavrov’s comments that Russia did not want a war, “but it needed support with action. We need to see Russia withdraw some of the forces it has deployed away from the Ukrainian border and take over other de-escalation measures. ” The official wanted to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak in public.
Lavrov said the United States had hinted that the two sides could talk about restrictions on the deployment of medium-range missiles, restrictions on military training and regulations to prevent accidents between warships and aircraft. He said that the Russians had started discussing these issues years ago, but that Washington and its allies had never touched on them.
He also said that these issues were secondary to Russia’s main concerns about NATO. He said international treaties mean that the security of one country should not come at the expense of others, and he said he would send letters to his Western colleagues asking them to explain how they were not keeping that promise.
Washington has warned Moscow of devastating sanctions if it invades Ukraine, including sanctions against Russia’s top officials and key economic sectors. Lavrov said Moscow had warned Washington that sanctions would mean a complete breakdown of relations.
Meanwhile, NATO has announced that it is strengthening its deterrence capabilities in the Baltic Sea region.
Russia has launched military exercises involving motorized infantry and artillery units in southwestern Russia, warplanes in Kaliningrad by the Baltic Sea, and dozens of warships in the Black Sea and the Arctic. Russian forces are also in joint exercises in Belarus, raising concerns in the West that Moscow could launch an attack on Ukraine from the north of Belarus. The Ukrainian capital is only 75 kilometers (46 miles) from the Belarusian border.
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