Nato wary of Ukraine ‘peace mission’
British PM Boris Johnson says Ukraine is not going to join Nato ‘any time soon’; Russia steps up its bombardment of Kyiv
BRUSSELS: Nato allies refused on Wednesday to back a Polish call for the alliance to send an armed peace mission to Ukraine, but vowed to keep supplying arms despite threats from Moscow.
Poland’s vice-premier, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, suggested a peacekeeping deployment in Ukraine to provide humanitarian aid during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday.
But Nato defence ministers were wary over the idea as they arrived in Brussels for urgent talks on Russia’s war against its neighbour. “I’m afraid we’re still in too early stages to talk about that,” said Dutch defence minister Kajsa Ollongren.
“First we have to have a ceasefire. We have to see a withdrawal from Russia. There has to be some kind of agreement between Ukraine and Russia, and I think the talks are still going on. It’s always good to think about what comes after that, but first, we need to achieve that.”
Estonian defence minister Kalle Laanet said that a proposed peacekeeping mission was “one of the possibilities and, of course, we have to look to all the possibilities which can help Ukraine”.
But he said a deployment would need the backing of the United Nations Security Council where Russia holds a veto.
Britain’s defence minister Ben Wallace said he would need to “look at the details first before making any decisions about what happens”.
Nato has rebuffed pleas from Ukraine to intervene in the conflict, including imposing a no-fly zone to help halt Russian bombings.
The US-led alliance says its direct involvement in nonmember state Ukraine could spark a confrontation with Russia that may spill over into nuclear war.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Ukraine is not going to join Nato “any time soon,” after the country’s president acknowledged Ukraine would not become part of the Western military alliance.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Ukraine realized it could not join Nato, his most explicit acknowledgment that the goal, enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution, was unlikely to be met.
On Wednesday, Johnson — one of the most vocal Western supporters of Ukraine — said “the reality of the position” is that “there is no way Ukraine is going to join Nato any time soon.” But he said the decision had to be for Ukraine to make.
Offensive continues
As Russia’s offensive pressed closer to Ukraine’s seat of government, missiles and artillery slammed into high-rise apartment towers in Kyiv on Wednesday, setting buildings ablaze and sending smoke over the capital and its suburbs. Russian forces escalated their bombardment of Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv and the besieged port of Mariupol, intensifying the war’s humanitarian toll and leaving cities smoldering.
Shrapnel from an artillery shell smashed into an apartment in the centre of Kyiv early on Wednesday, wiping out the building’s top floor and sparking a fire. Emergency services reported two victims from the blaze, without specifying if they were killed or injured.
A Russian airstrike slammed into the town of Markhalivka southwest of the capital and destroyed residential apartments, authorities added. The extent of the damage remained unclear.
Russia now occupies the city of Ivankiv, 80km north of Kyiv, and controls the surrounding region on the border with Belarus, local officials said.
A ceaseless barrage of strikes pounded the northeastern city of Kharkiv close to the Russian border that has suffered repeated bombardment. Powerful explosions also thundered in the region around Kherson.