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Russia has told the United States to stop sending more arms to Ukraine, warning that large western deliveries of weapons were inflaming the conflict and would lead to more losses, Moscow’s ambassador to Washington said.
Russia’s February 24th invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced millions more and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States – by far the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.
The United States has ruled out sending its own or Nato forces to Ukraine but Washington and its European allies have supplied weapons to Kyiv such as drones, Howitzer heavy artillery, anti-aircraft Stinger and anti-tank Javelin missiles.
Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, said such arms deliveries were aimed at weakening Russia but that they were escalating the conflict in Ukraine while undermining efforts to reach some sort of peace agreement.
“What the Americans are doing is pouring oil on the flames,” Mr Antonov told the Rossiya 24 TV channel. “I see only an attempt to raise the stakes, to aggravate the situation, to see more losses.”
Mr Antonov, who has served as ambassador to Washington since 2017, said an official diplomatic note had been sent to Washington expressing Russia’s concerns. No reply had been given, Mr Antonov said.
“We stressed the unacceptability of this situation when the United States of America pours weapons into Ukraine, and we demanded an end to this practice,” Antonov said.
The interview was replayed on Russian state television throughout Monday. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv on Sunday. They told Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskiy of more than $322 million in new military financing for Ukraine, taking total US security assistance since the invasion to about $3.7 billion, a US official said.
US president Joe Biden pledged $800 million in more weaponry for Ukraine on Thursday and said he would ask Congress for more money to help bolster support for the Ukrainian military.
Russian president Vladimir Putin says the “special military operation” in Ukraine is necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people.
Mr Putin, who says Ukraine and Russia are essentially one people, casts the war as an inevitable confrontation with the United States, which he accuses of threatening Russia by meddling in its backyard and enlarging the Nato military alliance.
Meeting
The United States promised on Monday to reopen its embassy in Kyiv soon, as defence secretary Lloyd Austin and secretary of state Antony Blinken visited Ukraine’s capital and hailed its success so far against Russia’s invasion.
Both men said the fact they were able to come to Kyiv was proof of Ukraine’s tenacity in forcing Moscow to abandon an assault on the capital last month, and promised more aid to fend off Russian troops now attempting an advance in the east.
“What you’ve done in repelling the Russians in the battle of Kyiv is extraordinary and inspiring quite frankly to the rest of the world,” Mr Austin told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy at a meeting overnight, after a train journey from Poland.
“We are here to support you in any way possible,” said Mr Blinken. “The reason we’re back is because of you, because of the extraordinary courage, leadership and success that you’ve had in pushing back this horrific Russian aggression,” he said.
The meeting between the US delegation and Ukraine’s leaders ran for three hours, or more than double the allotted time, a US official said. “In terms of Russia’s war aims, Russia has already failed and Ukraine has already succeeded,” Mr Blinken told a briefing in Poland after the two officials returned.
Railway stations
Five railway stations came under fire in western and central Ukraine on Monday, causing an unspecified number of casualties, Ukrainian television quoted state-run Ukrainian Railways as saying.
Oleksander Kamyshin, the company’s chief, said the attacks took place in the space of an hour. All of the country was placed under an unusually long air raid warning for two hours on Monday morning.
Across the border in Russia’s Bryansk region, authorities were battling a huge blaze at an oil depot. There was no immediate indication that the fire was connected to the war, but Russia accused Ukraine of a helicopter attack in that area last week.
Russia has always denied intending to overthrow Ukraine’s government. Western countries say that was its aim from the outset but it failed in the face of Ukrainian resistance.
Just weeks ago, Kyiv was a frontline city under curfew and bombardment, with tens of thousands of Russian troops massing on its northern outskirts. Residents spent nights huddled in its metro stations, sheltering from artillery. Today, the nearest Russian troops are hundreds of miles away, normal life is returning to the capital, Western leaders have been visiting and countries are reopening their embassies.
Mr Blinken said US diplomats would first return to Lviv in the west and should be back in Kyiv within weeks. But despite Ukraine having repelled the assault on Kyiv, the war is far from over. Russia has regrouped its forces and sent more troops in to eastern Ukraine.
Last week it launched a massive assault there in an attempt to capture eastern provinces known as the Donbas.
Missile strikes
The relative calm in Kyiv is a contrast with the south and east of the country, where the war grinds on relentlessly. Some 320 kilometres southeast of Kyiv, Russian missile strikes on an oil refinery and power plant in Kremenchuk, killing one person and wounding seven, the governor of the Poltava region said.
Ukraine’s general staff described Russian shelling and assaults along most of the front in the east, including missile and bomb attacks on a huge steel works in Mariupol where the last Ukrainian defenders are holed up in a city destroyed during two months of Russian siege and bombardment.
Moscow, which describes its actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation”, denies targeting civilians. The European Union is preparing “smart sanctions” against Russian oil imports, possibly some form of oil embargo, Britain’s The Times newspaper reported on Monday, citing the European Commission’s executive vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis. – Reuters