US President Donald Trump has said he might cancel a long-awaited summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin after a confrontation at sea between Russia and Ukraine led Kiev to warn of the threat of “full-scale war.”
Trump is scheduled to meet Putin at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires at the end of this week, but said it would depend on the results of a report being prepared by his national security advisers about Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian naval ships.
“Maybe I won’t have the meeting. Maybe I won’t even have the meeting,” he told the Washington Post on Tuesday.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko earlier said that the standoff could herald more drastic developments as tensions escalate between the ex-Soviet neighbors.
“I don’t want anyone to think this is fun and games. Ukraine is under threat of full-scale war with Russia,” Poroshenko said.
The number of Russian units deployed along the Ukrainian border has “grown dramatically,” while the number of Russian tanks has tripled, Poroshenko said, citing intelligence reports, but giving no precise timescale for the buildup.
He spoke after Russian forces seized three of Kiev’s ships off the coast of Crimea on Sunday and captured 24 Ukrainian sailors.
On Tuesday, a court in Simferopol, the main city in Russian-annexed Crimea, ordered 12 of the sailors to be held in pretrial detention for two months.
Three hospitalized sailors were also formally detained for two months. The rest were to appear in court yesterday.
The move stoked already high tensions between Moscow and Kiev, as Russia continues to accuse the sailors of crossing illegally into Russian waters and of ignoring warnings from its border guards.
Kiev has demanded the release of the sailors and urged Western allies to impose further sanctions on Moscow.
The US Department of State has termed Russia’s actions “a dangerous escalation” and said Washington wants to see “our European allies doing more to assist Ukraine.”
The incident was the first major confrontation at sea in the conflict pitting Ukraine against Moscow and Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east.
Putin on Tuesday warned Ukraine against any “reckless acts” after Kiev declared martial law in response to Moscow’s seizure of the vessels.
The Ukrainian parliament on Monday voted in favor of Poroshenko’s request for the introduction of martial law in border areas for 30 days. This gives Ukrainian authorities the power to mobilize citizens with military experience, regulate the media and restrict public rallies in affected areas.
Moscow has accused Kiev of planning Sunday’s confrontation as a provocation aimed at drumming up support for Poroshenko ahead of elections next year and convincing Western governments to impose further sanctions on Russia.
Putin said Kiev’s actions were “clearly taken in view of the election campaign in Ukraine.”
Russian state television has aired footage of some of the captured sailors being questioned by Moscow’s security services.
One of them is heard saying “the actions of the Ukrainian armed vessels in the Kerch Strait had a provocatory character” — parroting the version of events put forward by Russian authorities.
Ukrainian Navy Commander Igor Voronchenko said the sailors were pressured into giving false evidence.
“I know these sailors, they were always professional. What they are saying now is not true,” he told Ukrainian media.
MISSILE DEPLOYMENT
Russia yesterday said it planned to deploy more of its advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile systems to Crimea.
A Reuters correspondent in Crimea also yesterday saw a Russian navy minesweeper ship, the Vice-Admiral Zakharin, heading for the Sea of Azov, which is used by both Ukraine and Russia, from the Black Sea.
Russian news agencies cited Vadim Astafyev, a spokesman for Russia’s southern military district, as saying that a new battalion of S-400 missiles would be delivered to Crimea soon and become operational by the end of the year.
Additional reporting by Reuters
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS