The US President Joe Biden insisted on Thursday that Russia plans to invade Ukraine shortly, and Moscow expelled the number two from the US embassy, in a sudden escalation of tensions between the two powers just days after they seemed to begin to ease.
The comments and the expulsion coincided with a spike in tensions in the area of eastern Ukraine bordering Russia, where the Army fights Russian-speaking militias supported by Moscow, just on the day that the highest UN body evaluated the application of the Agreements of Minsk of 2015 aimed at pacifying the conflict.
At the meeting of Security Council Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Vershinin denounced Ukraine for breaching that pact, the same accusation made by the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN.
In the same scenario, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that intelligence showed that Moscow could order an attack on its neighbor in the “coming days”.
The official challenged the Kremlin to “announce this Thursday without reservations, equivocations or deviations that Russia will not proceed to invade Ukraine,” adding: “Say it clearly. Say it clearly to the world. Show it by sending your troops, your tanks, your planes, back to their barracks and hangars, and sending their diplomats to the negotiating table.
The United States leads accusations that Russia has 150,000 soldiers near the border with Ukraine and plans to invade it, while Moscow demands that the Ukrainian government be pressured to implement the 2015 agreementsmediated by Germany and France, to pacify the conflict zone with the Russian-speaking militias.
More than 14,000 people have died in fighting between the Ukrainian army and the militias, which control two provinces, Lugansk and Donetsk, in the Russian-speaking region of Ukraine known as Donbass.
The militias took up arms in rejection of the overthrow of the previous Ukrainian government by a wave of protests in 2014 and its replacement by the current one, which is anti-Russian.
Lugansk militias denounced bombings on Thursday and said it was a “large-scale provocation”while a separatist commander, Rodion Miroshnik, said his forces returned fire.
Ukraine denied the information, saying it was the separatists who bombed its forces.and that they did not respond, reported the AFP news agency.
The General Command of the Ukrainian Army announced that projectiles hit a kindergarten in Stanytsia Luhanska, a city controlled by the rebels, wounding two civilians and leaving half the town without power.
Russia said this week that it had begun withdrawing troops deployed near the Ukrainian border. that according to the West it planned to use to invade its neighbor, after some exercises were completed.
Moscow denies wanting to invade Ukraine, but demands guarantees from the United States that the country will not join NATOthat it will stop giving arms to the Ukrainian Army and that it will withdraw its forces from Eastern European countries that it has included in recent years.
Russia considers this a threat to its security, but the United States and NATO have refused to even talk about it.
This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin regretted that the United States and the Atlantic alliance have rejected these demands, although he said he was ready to discuss issues that the alliance does agree to discuss, such as limitations on the deployment of missiles and military maneuvers in Europe from This, without giving up the main concerns of Moscow.
These comments, plus the announcement of a Russian military withdrawal, had raised hopes of detente.
But the feeling was short-lived.
On Wednesday, the United States and NATO said they saw no signs of a pullout.
At the White House, Biden said Russia could invade Ukraine “in the next few days.”
At about the same time, the State Department confirmed reports from the Russian news agency Ria Novosti that Moscow had expelled “number two” from the US embassy, Bart Gorman, in an “unfounded” manner.
Russia did not comment, and it was not clear why.
Biden added that his country had “reasons to believe” that Russia was plotting to simulate Ukrainian military action to “have an excuse” to invade the country.
The Kremlin has long said Ukraine, encouraged by NATO, might want to launch an attack to retake the two rebel-held eastern provinces.
The West, on the other hand, says it fears that a worsening of the situation in Donbass will be used by Russia as a pretext to cross the border.which Biden seemed to hint at.
The shelling in Donbass is “really worrying”, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters.
“We have already said that the Russians could do something like this to justify a military conflict,” he added.
In Moscow, on the other hand, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov said that of everything agreed with Russia, the West only applies the principle that Ukraine is free to ally with whomever it wants, “but it moves away from the rest of the commitments.”
“Such dishonest attitude is seen in their approach to the Minsk Agreements,” he added.
British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, without showing evidence, said the Kindergarten bombing had been staged by separatists to “discredit” Ukraine and create an excuse for Russia to intervene.
However, the president Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted that the “bombing of a kindergarten was a big provocation”, but said nothing about a staging.
The Minsk Agreements managed to end large-scale fighting, but efforts to reach a final political understanding are stalled and skirmishes are daily.
Under the agreements, Russia recognized that the two provinces controlled by the rebels are from Ukraine. Moscow has rejected their requests to join Russia.
Ukraine, for its part, promised to give autonomy to the provinces and amnesty to separatists, but has not complied with it despite exhortations, especially from France.
Ukraine says Russia arms separatists. Moscow denies this, although it supports their claims that they feel threatened by the Ukrainian government.
