Russian military exercises in Belarus would continue, Minsk announced yesterday, leaving Moscow with a large force near the northern Ukraine border as Western powers warn of an imminent invasion.
The announcement came as French President Emmanuel Macron called Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a last-ditch effort to avert a Russian invasion, his office said.
The call, which lasted 105 minutes, came two weeks after Macron went to Moscow to persuade Putin to hold back from sending troops massed on the border.
Photo: AFP
It represented “the final possible and necessary efforts to avoid a major conflict in Ukraine,” the Elysee said ahead of the conversation.
After the conversation with Putin, Macron went on to talk with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the telephone, the French presidency said.
Moscow had previously said the 30,000 troops it has in Belarus were simply carrying out readiness drills with its ally, which would be finished by yesterday, allowing the Russians to head back to their bases.
However, as the day arrived for the operation to end, the Belarus Ministry of Defense said Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had decided to “continue inspections,” citing increased military activity on their shared borders and an alleged “escalation” in east Ukraine.
The move is likely to be seen as a further tightening of the screws on Ukraine, already facing increased shelling from Russian-backed separatist rebels and a force of what Western capitals say is more than 150,000 Russian personnel on its borders.
It would also be seen as a rebuff to efforts by leaders like Macron and Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz to urge their Russian counterpart to pull back from the brink of war.
More bombardments were heard by reporters overnight close to the front line between government forces and the Moscow-backed rebels who hold parts of the districts of Lugansk and Donetsk.
“Every indication indicates that Russia is planning a full-fledged attack against Ukraine,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, echoing US President Joe Biden, who believes that the invasion is imminent.
The Moscow-backed separatists have accused Ukraine of planning an offensive into their enclave, despite the huge Russian military buildup on the frontier.
Kiev and Western countries ridicule this idea, and accuse Moscow of attempting to provoke Ukraine and of plotting to fabricate incidents to provide a pretext for a Russian intervention.
“Russian military personnel and special services are planning to commit acts of terror in temporarily-occupied Donetsk and Lugansk, killing civilians,” said Lieutenant General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“Our enemy wants to use this as an excuse to blame Ukraine and move in regular soldiers of the Russian armed forces, under the guise of ‘peacekeepers,’” Zaluzhniy said.
The rebel regions have made similar claims about Ukraine’s forces and have ordered a general mobilization, while staging an evacuation of civilians into neighboring Russian territory.
Zelenskiy told Macron on Saturday that he would not respond to Russia’s provocations, the Elysee said.
However, in his speech to the Munich Security Conference, he also condemned “a policy of appeasement” toward Moscow.
“For eight years, Ukraine has been holding back one of the greatest armies in the world,” he said.
He called for “clear, feasible timeframes” for Ukraine to join the US-led NATO military alliance — something Moscow has said it would never accept.
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