Hours before declaring the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin at the wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on February 23, 2022. The President honoured the memory of the fallen soldiers with a minute of silence. Photo credit: kremlin.ru
Moscow/Kyiv/Washington DC/New York: The West-backed United States’ sanctions notwithstanding, Russian President Vladimir Putin, shunned the diplomacy route and ordered his troops to march ahead for military operation in Ukraine.
“I have made the decision of a military operation,” Putin said in a television announcement today (local time). Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov warned that a “full-scale invasion” was underway.
Already Russia had positioned between 150,000 and 200,000 troops along the borders of Ukraine and reports say that shortly after Putin’s announcement, explosions were heard in Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv around 5 am today February 24, Ukraine time (10 pm of February 23, 2022 in New York), according to media reports.
Earlier on February 22, 2022, Russia’s Federation Council had already approved Putin’s request to deploy the Armed Forces of Russia abroad.
In Washington, US President Joe Biden termed the attack on Russia as “unprovoked” and “unjustified”. He said he was monitoring the situation and would be meeting his G7 counterparts today. He also said that he would speak to the American people “to announce the further consequences the United States and our Allies and partners will impose on Russia for this needless act of aggression against Ukraine and global peace and security”.
Biden said he will also be coordinating with the NATO Allies to ensure a “strong, united” response that deters any aggression against the Alliance.
“President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering. Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable,” he stated.
The West-supported US sanctions on Russia after Putin approved Duma’s proposal and recognised the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine as independent people’s republic apparently proved to be the final straw.
The last international leader that Putin had talked to just before the attack was announced, was Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a telephone conversation with Erdogan on February 23, 2022, Putin had exchanged views on the situation with Russia’s recognition of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and stressed the objective necessity to take that decision based on the Ukrainian authorities’ aggression in Donbass and their categorical refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements.
In course of the conversation with Erdogan, Putin expressed his disappointment with the US and NATO response “which came down to an attempt to ignore Russia’s legitimate concerns and demands”.
Kremlin stated that Erdogan “gave his well-known views on the matter”.
The tension was building up over Ukraine for quite some time and had peaked earlier this month.
Also read: World feels edgy after Russia’s stern stance on Ukraine
At a dedicated Assembly session on Ukraine at the United Nations in New York on February 23, 2022, (local time), Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine asserted that Russia had attacked the UN’s fundamental principles of international peace and security and “the very existence of the Ukrainian State”. He said, “What is happening right now in the Eastern Ukraine, where Russian tanks are rolling in, and along the Ukrainian borders, where Russian forces are amassed in enormous quantities, must be a concern for everyone”.
Kuleba went on to state that Russia had “literally stuffed” the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov with 46 military vessels… [which] “amounts almost to a blockade of Ukrainian seaports…and continues to block the release of illegally detained persons.”
He further claimed that as the occupying power in Crimea, “Russia persists in destroying the identity of Ukrainians and the indigenous Crimean Tatars”.
Russia’s UN Ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, told the Assembly that with Russia’s recognition of “the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), this conflict is far from over”. He said the shelling of peaceful quarters of both had not stopped and that Kiev (Kyiv) remained armed and continued to incite and encouraged violence. He warned that at the request of Donetsk and Lugansk, Russia will continue to monitor the regime ceasefire and that its armed forces will not tolerate violators.
“Therefore, I urge you today to focus your efforts on calming down Kiev and keeping it from new military adventures that could cost the whole of Ukraine dearly,” the Russian Ambassador said.
Earlier on February 22, 2022, in Moscow (local time), Putin while interacting with media persons had dropped enough hints of his impending actions. “What more is there to wait for? Should we wait for this abuse of people to continue, this genocide of the almost four million people who live in these territories [Donetsk and Lugansk]? It is unbearable to watch. You can see for yourself what is going on there. Well, how can you continue to put up with that? As a matter of fact, that is all there is to it,” he had said. He had then claimed that Russia’s recognition of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic was dictated “precisely by the fact” that the Ukrainian leadership had publicly declared that they were not going to abide by the Minsk agreements.
Subsequently, in New York on February 23, 2022, at the special session of the General Assembly, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described the Minsk Agreements – the fragile peace process regulating the conflict in eastern Ukraine – as surviving “in an intensive care unit thanks to a number of life support devices.”
“But now those devices have been disconnected”, he stated, asserting that “It is time to establish a ceasefire and return to dialogue and negotiations”.
Watch UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivering his speech here:
Putin had earlier said during his February 22 interaction with media persons that the Minsk agreements were “dead long before the recognition of the people’s republics of Donbass” [region in south-eastern Ukraine, some of whose territory is occupied by two separatist groups, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic].
Putin had charged that “They were killed not by us and not by the representatives of these republics, but by the current Kiev authorities.”
Talking at length about the Minsk agreements or the Minsk Package of Measures to settle the situation in southeastern Ukraine, Putin said it had been almost eight full years that Russia had been working on this. Being the author of these documents, Putin said he was “interested in seeing this package of measures implemented because it was the result of a compromise”.
“The leaders of the two then unrecognised republics signed these documents. Incidentally, one of them was killed in a terrorist act. He was killed by the special services of Ukraine, an agent of these services. There is no question here. This is an obvious thing, simply an outright political assassination. But what matters is that the leaders of the two republics signed these documents. We managed to broker this compromise at that time. By the way, it was not easy to do this because initially, the leaders of these entities did not want to take part in the Minsk agreements and to sign their names to these documents. But a compromise was reached nonetheless, which was real progress towards achieving a settlement by peaceful means.”
Putin accused the current Kiev authorities of reducing the Minsk agreements “to nought”. He said, “…the [Russian] recognition of these republics [Donetsk and Luhansk] – was dictated precisely by the fact that the Ukrainian leadership had publicly declared that they were not going to abide by these agreements. Not going to abide by them. Well, what else can you say to that? The top officials have publicly said so.”
The UN Secretary-General Guterres though took a stand: “The decision of the Russian Federation to recognize the so-called ‘independence’ of Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and the follow-up – are violations of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
– global bihari bureau
