Russia accuses the West of showing no willingness for peace initiatives in Ukraine. As the “great provocateur” of international tensions, the United States would stoke “the crisis in Ukraine” with its own actions, state news agency TASS wrote, citing the Kremlin. At the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, it was said that a new procurement procedure was being worked out in the EU because of Ukraine’s great need for ammunition.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov sharply criticized the statements by US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. The top diplomat said the US believed Crimea should be demilitarized and that his country supported Ukrainian attacks on military targets on the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. “Nuland belongs to a very wide field of the most aggressive ‘hawks’ in American politics. This is a stance we know well,” Peskov said in a TASS commentary.
Russia’s ambassador to Washington also accuses the US of fueling the war in Ukraine, which he describes as a crisis, through its own actions. Anatoly Antonov referred to the statement by US Vice President Kamala Harris, who accused Russia of crimes against humanity in the Ukraine war. “We regard such allegations as an unprecedented attempt to demonize Russia as part of the hybrid war unleashed against us,” the ambassador was quoted as saying by TASS. There is no doubt that the purpose of such attacks by Washington is to justify its own actions to stoke the crisis in Ukraine.
Harris told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that Russian troops in Ukraine were committing “widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population”. It is an “attack on our common values and our common humanity”. It is the first time the US has accused Russia of crimes against humanity in the war.
These included “cruel murders”, “execution-type” killings of men, women and children, torture of civilians with beatings and electric shocks and the deportation of Ukrainian civilians to Russia, the vice president said. “We have examined the evidence, we know the legal norms and there is no doubt: they are crimes against humanity”, emphasized the vice president, a former prosecutor. The US has documented more than 30,600 cases of war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine since the start of the war, according to the State Department in Washington.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the US government’s position. Russia is waging a “genocidal war” against Ukraine, during which the Russian army is committing crimes against humanity, war crimes and countless other atrocities, he said in Munich. However, it is difficult to prove the individual responsible for his actions.
In view of Ukraine’s large ammunition needs, the EU is working on a new procurement procedure. This was confirmed by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday at the Munich Security Conference. Ukraine cannot win the war without ammunition. Borrell said, “We’re in war mode.” Now it’s a matter of reacting quickly.
According to Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, the aim is to use a procedure similar to that used to ensure rapid procurement of vaccines during the corona pandemic. According to Kallas, EU states must provide money, with which large orders can be placed to the arms industry through the EU. The process can ensure that the industry can make the necessary investments to expand production.
In Munich, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg clearly rejected Ukraine’s demands for cluster munitions and incendiary phosphorus weapons. “We deliver artillery and other types of weapons, but not cluster bombs,” Stoltenberg told RTL and ntv.
Norway wants to help Ukraine in the long term and regardless of the current government in Kiev. “Whoever governs Norway after the next elections, Ukraine can be sure that it has support for reconstruction and self-defence,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in an interview with Portal TV published on Sunday. “7.5 billion euros in five years was our message.” The decision was made along party lines. A long-term engagement with Ukraine is considered important because there is speculation about a change in US policy towards Ukraine after the next presidential election.
Nine of the twelve ambulances that were blessed at Ballhausplatz in mid-February by Viennese Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and sent on their way arrived in Kiev on time on Saturday. According to Kathpress, the Vicar General for the Eastern Catholic Churches in Austria, Yuriy Kolasa, handed over the emergency vehicles to the head of Byzantine Rite Catholics, Grand Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk, at Kiev’s Resurrection Cathedral.
According to local authorities, several Russian shells landed in the town of Druzhkivka in eastern Ukraine. Two residential buildings were damaged overnight on Sunday, said the governor of the disputed Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko. Initially, he did not provide any information on injuries or deaths. Druzhkivka is far behind the front, but is still being targeted by several rocket fire, wrote Kyrylenko on the Telegram network.
According to a report by the “Ukraiinska Pravda” news portal, a total of eight Ukrainian administrative areas have been bombed since Saturday. These included Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts, all close to the front lines. According to authorities, a military object was hit by a long-range missile in the capital of the Khmelnytskyi region in western Ukraine. Another rocket landed near a station. The explosion damaged several homes and schools.
As of Sunday morning, there were intermittent airstrikes in eastern and southern Ukraine, with no reports of actual attacks. The Russian war of aggression against the neighboring country has been going on for almost a year.