Putin announces military operation in Ukraine, warns West against interfering in border crisis

KYIV, FEB. 24: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday announced a military operation in Ukraine, claiming it’s intended to protect civilians.

In a televised address, Putin said the action comes in response to threats coming from Ukraine.

He added that Russia doesn’t have a goal to occupy Ukraine.

Putin said the responsibility for bloodshed lies with the Ukrainian “regime”.

Putin warned other countries that any attempt to interfere with the Russian action would lead to “consequences they have never seen”.

He accused the US and its allies of ignoring Russia’s demand to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and offer Moscow security guarantees.

He said the Russian military operation aims to ensure a “demilitarisation” of Ukraine.

Putin said that all Ukrainian servicemen who lay down arms will be able to safely leave the zone of combat.

Guterres addressed an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine late Wednesday night, the second meeting this week and the fourth since January 31 as tensions escalated between Russia and Ukraine.

Earlier in the day, the UN chief had addressed the UN General Assembly meeting on Ukraine.

“I want to reaffirm what I expressed this morning in the meeting in the General Assembly, but of course it would not make any sense to bother you reading again the same text that I am sure you are all aware of,” Guterres said in his brief off-the-cuff remarks at the Security Council meeting requested by Ukraine.

“In between, during the day, a number of events took place. But simultaneously, today was full of rumours and indications that an offensive against Ukraine was imminent. In the recent past, there were several situations with similar indications, similar rumours. And I never believed in them, convinced that nothing serious would happen. I was wrong. And I would like not to be wrong again today.”

“So, if indeed an operation is being prepared, I have only one thing to say from the bottom of my heart: President Putin, stop your troops from attacking Ukraine. Give peace a chance. Too many people have already died,” he said.

The UN chief’s appeal came before President Putin, in a televised address, on Thursday announced a military operation in Ukraine, claiming it’s intended to protect civilians.

Putin said Russia’s move came in response to threats emanating from Ukraine.

He also warned other countries that if they attempted to interfere with the Russian military operation they would see “consequences they have never seen”.

Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo told the Council that it cannot be predicted exactly what will happen in the “coming hours and days” in Ukraine.

“What is clear is the unacceptably high cost, in human suffering and destruction, of an escalation. The people of Ukraine want peace. I am certain the people of Russia want peace. We must do everything in our power to ensure that peace prevails,” she said.

DiCarlo said that earlier in the day, the so-called authorities of the “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics” requested military assistance from Russia.

The Ukrainian authorities declared a nationwide state of emergency and announced other related defense and security measures, including the mobilisation of reservists.

“This evening, different media are reporting of an ongoing large-scale military buildup and military columns moving towards Ukraine. The Russian Federation has also reportedly shut airspace to civilian aircraft near the border with Ukraine,” she said.

DiCarlo said while the UN cannot verify any of these reports, if these developments were confirmed, “they would greatly aggravate an already extremely dangerous situation”.

Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that Ukraine requested the urgent meeting of the Security Council “due to the appeal by Russian occupation administrations in Donetsk and Luhansk to Russia with a request to provide them with military assistance, which is a further escalation of the security situation”.

The Kremlin said rebels in eastern Ukraine asked Russia for military assistance Wednesday to help fend off Ukrainian “aggression”, an announcement that immediately fuelled fears that Moscow was offering up a pretext for war, just as the West had warned.

A short time later, the Ukrainian president rejected Moscow’s claims that his country poses a threat to Russia and said a Russian invasion would cost tens of thousands of lives.

“The people of Ukraine and the government of Ukraine want peace,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an emotional overnight address, speaking in Russian in a direct appeal to Russian citizens.

“But if we come under attack, if we face an attempt to take away our country, our freedom, our lives and lives of our children, we will defend ourselves. When you attack us, you will see our faces, not our backs.

Zelenskyy said he asked to arrange a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin late Wednesday, but the Kremlin did not respond.

In an apparent reference to Putin’s move to authorise the deployment of the Russian military to “maintain peace” in eastern Ukraine, Zelensky warned that “this step could mark the start of a big war on the European continent.”

“Any provocation, any spark could trigger a blaze that will destroy everything,” he said.

He challenged the Russian propaganda claims, saying that “you are told that this blaze will bring freedom to the people of Ukraine, but the Ukrainian people are free”.

The United Nations Security Council quickly scheduled an emergency meeting Wednesday night at Ukraine’s request.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called the separatists’ request “a further escalation of the security situation”.

Anxiety about an imminent Russian offensive against its neighbour soared after Putin recognised the separatist regions’ independence on Monday, endorsed the deployment of troops to the rebel territories and received parliamentary approval to use military force outside the country.

The West responded with sanctions.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the rebel chiefs wrote to Putin on Wednesday, pleading with him to intervene after Ukrainian shelling caused civilian deaths and crippled vital infrastructure.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the separatists’ request for Russian help was an example of the sort of “false-flag” operation that the US and its allies have expected Moscow to use as a pretence for war.

“So we’ll continue to call out what we see as false-flag operations or efforts to spread misinformation about what the actual status is on the ground,” she said.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian lawmakers approved a decree that imposes a nationwide state of emergency for 30 days starting Thursday.

The measure allows authorities to declare curfews and other restrictions on movement, block rallies and ban political parties and organisations “in the interests of national security and public order”.

The action reflected increasing concern among Ukrainian authorities after weeks of trying to project calm.

The Foreign Ministry advised against travel to Russia and recommended that any Ukrainians who are there leave immediately.

“For a long time, we refrained from declaring a state of emergency, but today the situation has become more complicated,” Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council head Oleksiy Danilov told parliament, emphasising that Moscow’s efforts to destabilise Ukraine represented the main threat.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the Russian force of more than 150,000 troops arrayed along Ukraine’s borders is in an advanced state of readiness.

“They are ready to go right now,” Kirby said.

The latest images released by the Maxar satellite image company showed Russian troops and military equipment deployed within 10 miles of the Ukrainian border and less than 50 miles from Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv.

Early Thursday, airspace over all of Ukraine was shut down to civilian air traffic, according to a notice to airmen.

A commercial flight tracking website showed that an Israeli El Al Boeing 787 flying from Tel Aviv to Toronto turned abruptly out of Ukrainian airspace before detouring over Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.

The only other aircraft tracked over Ukraine was a US RQ-4B Global Hawk unmanned surveillance plane, which began flying westward early Thursday after Russia put in place flight restrictions over Ukrainian territory.

Another wave of distributed-denial-of-service attacks hit Ukraine’s parliament and other government and banking websites on Wednesday, and cybersecurity researchers said unidentified attackers had also infected hundreds of computers with destructive malware.

Officials have long said they expect cyberattacks to precede and accompany any Russian military incursion, and analysts said the incidents hew to a nearly two-decade-old Russian playbook of wedding cyber operations with real-world aggression.

In other developments, Russia evacuated its embassy in Kyiv; Ukraine recalled its ambassador to Russia and considered breaking all diplomatic ties with Moscow and dozens of nations further squeezed Russian oligarchs and banks out of international markets.

President Joe Biden allowed sanctions to move forward against the company that built the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and against the company’s CEO.

“As I have made clear, we will not hesitate to take further steps if Russia continues to escalate,” Biden said in a statement.

Germany said Tuesday that it was indefinitely suspending the project, after Biden charged that Putin had launched “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine” by sending troops into the separatist regions.

The pipeline is complete but has not yet begun operating.

Putin said Tuesday that he had not yet sent any Russian troops into the rebel regions, contrary to Western claims, and Donetsk rebel leader Denis Pushilin insisted Wednesday there were no Russian troops in the region, even though a local council member claimed the previous day they had moved in.

Already, the threat of war has shredded Ukraine’s economy and raised the spectre of massive casualties, energy shortages across Europe and global economic chaos.

European Union sanctions against Russia took effect, targeting several companies along with 351 Russian lawmakers who voted for a motion urging Putin to recognize the rebel regions and 27 senior government officials, business executives and top military officers.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has shrugged off the sanctions, saying that “Russia has proven that, with all the costs of the sanctions, it is able to minimise the damage”.

In Ukraine’s east, one Ukrainian soldier was killed and six more wounded after rebel shelling, the Ukrainian military said Wednesday.

Separatist officials reported several explosions on their territory overnight and three civilian deaths.

Facing a barrage of criticism at the 193-member United Nations General Assembly, Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, warned Ukraine that Russia will monitor a cease-fire in the east and emphasized that “no one intends to go softly, softly with any violators.”

“A new military adventure” by Kyiv “might cost the whole of Ukraine very dearly,” he warned ominously.

After weeks of rising tensions, Putin’s steps this week dramatically raised the stakes.

He recognised the independence of the separatist regions, a move he said extends even to the large parts of the territories now held by Ukrainian forces, and had parliament grant him authority to use military force outside the country.

Putin laid out three conditions that he said could end the standoff, urging Kyiv to renounce its bid to join NATO, to partially demilitarise and to recognise Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine long has rejected such demands.

-PTI