The Guardian - Russia-Ukraine war: Ukraine foreign minister says Moscow ‘senses defeat’; US set to host talks in Germany on arming Kyiv

Muristek

Russia-Ukraine war: Ukraine foreign minister says Moscow ‘senses defeat’; US set to host talks in Germany on arming Kyiv – live

Link [2022-04-26 09:36:36]

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In the UK, the armed forces minister, James Heappey has been interviewed on Sky News. He said that Russian seizing territory in the Donbas was not inevitable.

He pointed out that fighters in Mariupol continued to hold out against Russian forces despite suggestions the city would completely fall, but said the situation across eastern Ukraine would be different.

I think that what we will see in the Donbas is a very different type of conflict to the one that we saw around Kyiv. I think we’ll see a conflict between two forces that are much more evenly balanced, where the Ukrainians have the advantage of defensive positions that have been dug in and prepared over the last eight years, and that’s going to make it an extraordinarily difficult nut for the Russians to crack. And I think that with all of the support that the Ukrainians are getting from around the world, there’s every chance the Ukrainians can see them off.

Nobody should rejoice that that’s 15,000 Russian families who haven’t got their son or husband or brother coming home.

People in Russia should be clear the Russian plan has been defined by incredible hubris, massive political interference in military plan making, and we’re seeing exactly the same now where there is pressure from Moscow to deliver a victory by the ninth of May so that Putin can have a nice parade through Red Square, even though that makes no military sense.

Firstly, the donor community is not Nato. Nato has been involved in reinforcing its eastern flank so a lot of the deployments of our troops ships and aircraft to Eastern Europe are very much under the Nato flag. The donor effort is something that has been brought together by countries that are from yes, many of them are from Nato, but others are from beyond.

Every time we have gone up a gear in terms of what we are providing, it is a direct consequence of the way that Russia has conducted its operations in Ukraine.

Sergey Lavrov might also reflect that the reason that there is a war in Ukraine right now is because Russia rolled over the borders of a sovereign country and started to invade their territory.

Nato is not an expansionist offensive Alliance. Nato is a defensive alliance. And all of this noise from Moscow about somehow their their attack on Ukraine being a response to Nato aggression is just utter, utter nonsense.