Ukraine warns Russia: World is on our side
UKRAINE has warned Russia it will face ‘very painful’ consequences if a military build-up on its borders continues.
The massing of troops in the Donbass region has also been condemned by the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
They have joined their neighbour in urging Russian leader Vladimir Putin (pictured) to ease tensions in the region and allow negotiations to resume.
Ukrainian vice prime minister Dmytro Kuleba yesterday held a joint news conference with the Baltics ministers in Kyiv. He said: ‘The world is on the side of Ukraine and international law, and this is one of the elements of restraining Russia from reckless actions.’
The US and Nato allies have been alarmed by the large build-up of Russian troops near Ukraine and in Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed from Kyiv in 2014.
On Wednesday, German leader Angela Merkel and US president Joe Biden called on Moscow to pull back troops to de-escalate the situation.
Meanwhile, Russian troops have painted their assault vehicles with ‘invasion stripes’. An observer in the Astrakhan region of Russia, 350 miles from the border, filmed a column of armoured personnel carriers with white crosses painted across the top of the vehicles. Similar stripes were painted on Soviet tanks during the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to identify them.