Call for military assistance
WESTERN leaders yesterday showed unity against the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, with Washington seeking more military aid to Ukraine, London imposing fresh sanctions against Moscow and Nato assigning more troops for its eastern flank.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Nato, EU and G7 countries meeting in Brussels to help Kyiv fight Russia’s invasion, which has killed thousands and driven a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people from their homes.
“To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military assistance without restrictions,” he said. “In the same way that Russia is using its full arsenal without restrictions against us.”
Zelensky urged citizens around the world to take to the streets in protest as the conflict reached the one-month mark.He accused Russia of using phosphorus bombs.
Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told the leaders at the Western military alliance’s headquarters: “We are determined to continue to impose costs on Russia to bring about the end of this brutal war. We will discuss allied support to Ukraine. We will also address Nato’s efforts to strengthen our defences now and for the years to come.”
US President Joe Biden said he was in favour of sending more troops to Nato’s eastern flank, said a senior US administration official, adding Washington was working to support Ukraine with anti-ship missiles.
Nato has rejected pleas by Kyiv to defend Ukraine’s skies from Russian air strikes, and Zelensky, who joined the Nato summit through a video call, has complained the West had not provided tanks or modern anti-missile systems.
Nato would also not send troops or planes to Ukraine, said Stoltenberg as reports said he would stay on as the alliance’s head beyond the end of his term later in 2022 due to the war.
“Nato has yet to show what the alliance can do to save people,” Zelensky told the summit, adding that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin also wanted to attack eastern Nato members, Poland and the Baltic states.
Putin says his “special military operation” is meant to disarm Ukraine, whose aspirations to join Nato and the EU are anathema to Moscow.
Nato has increased its presence on its eastern borders, with about 40000 troops spread from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The summit was to agree to deploy four new combat units in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.
Meanwhile, China accused Stoltenberg of “spreading disinformation” with claims that China had backed Russia’s war against Ukraine. “China’s position is consistent with the wishes of most countries,” Beijing’s foreign ministry said. “We have always maintained that Ukraine should become a bridge between the East and West, rather than be in the frontline in a game between great powers.”
A Nato official estimated that up to 15 000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine so far and that a total of up to 40000 have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or are missing.
Yesterday, the governor of the Lugansk region said that at least four people were killed, including two children, and six were wounded from overnight strikes in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine also said its forces had destroyed the Orsk, a large Russian landing ship near the Russian-occupied Ukrainian port of Berdyansk on the Azov Sea.
The month-long land, sea and air assault targeted residential areas, schools and hospitals in Ukrainian cities including Kharkiv as well as besieging Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. Russia denies targeting civilians. Ukrainian authorities said that about 15000 civilians had been illegally deported to Russia from besieged Mariupol since Russian forces seized parts of the southern port city.
The UN said that 4.3 million of Ukraine’s 7.5 million children had been uprooted by the war, and more than 145 000 babies were in urgent need of nutrition support. Nearly 3.7 million people have fled the country.
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, said yesterday that he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had discussed the need to protect civilians.
The Russian minister said: “Unfortunately we don’t have any particular basis to rely on conscientious fulfilment by the Kyiv authorities.”
Meanwhile, Britain yesterday sanctioned another wave of Russia’s banks including, as well as a woman it said was the stepdaughter of Lavrov.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said yesterday that more could done to prevent the Russian president from accessing his gold reserves, which could stop people buying Russian gold to convert it into hard currency.
The Kremlin said Johnson was the most active anti-Russian leader. “It will lead to a foreign policy dead end,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
The G7 group of advanced economies and the EU then pledged to block transactions involving the Russian central bank’s gold reserves to hamper any Moscow bid to circumvent Western sanctions, the White House said.
“Paralyse Putin’s war machine. Oil and gas are at its heart,” said Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. “We should set up a special third-party account to prevent revenues from going towards financing the war.”
The EU, which says it has already taken in about 3.6 million refugees from Ukraine, still depends on Moscow for a large share of its energy needs. Energy has largely been omitted from sanctions, the biggest loophole in measures that have otherwise frozen Russia out of world commerce. Putin said “unfriendly countries” that bought Russian gas would have to pay in roubles.
EU leaders were expected to agree to jointly buy gas, and Brussels also hopes for a deal with Biden to secure additional US liquefied natural gas supplies for the next two winters.
The Moscow Stock Exchange partially reopened yesterday after a nearly month-long suspension. Trading resumed for around 30 of the largest companies that make up the ruble-denominated MOEX Russia Index.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it was expelling US diplomats in retaliation for Washington removing 12 of Moscow’s representatives at the UN in New York. Meanwhile, Anatoly Chubais, a Putin adviser, quit his post, the Kremlin said. He fled the country in protest against the war.