“There’s simply no truce. We can no longer pretend that it does exist. We must say the truth and call a spade a spade. Russians begin acting insolently and openly making no attempt to hide their intentions. That’s why we’ve got to be ready for any unpredictable action by the aggressor”, said Leonid Kravchuk.
He believes that Russia is not going to change and will continue using its usual methods. “Russia has been at war for the last 150 years. And all those years, it has used nothing except for pressure and enforcement of peace. We should not think that if we yield to them they will become more compliant”, noted Kravchuk.
He stressed that there are Russian mercenaries, military commanders and weapons in the temporarily occupied districts of Ukraine. “We do not know exactly when all those weapons will be used but we must be ready for anything and give all our attention to what is happening”, added the head of the Ukrainian delegation at the TCG.
Kravchuk called for a proportionally severe answer to Russian attacks and stressed that it would be impossible to please the aggressor with concessions. “We all including the international community must act adequately. We’ll achieve nothing with tolerance, softness, and calls for compromises. We’ve got to be consistent and tough”.
A few days earlier, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov declared that the truce in Donbas had in fact been disrupted. “Russian terrorist formations carry out the regular shelling of the positions of the Ukrainian army. The situation has worsened considerably. There is no peace process anymore. Heavy guns work. There is sniper fire. The war is going on”, said the minister.
That Russia is not going to change has been confirmed by Dmitri Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian President. Thus, he said last week that the Kremlin believes that all the territories (including Ukraine) where Russians and Russian-speaking people live are part of the “Russian world”. He added that Moscow would support this world with all allegedly civilized methods or so-called “soft force”.
The chauvinistic statements of Dmitri Peskov which reflect the views of his Kremlin chief as well as those of many Russians did not go unanswered. Thus, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba gave quite a logic answer, “Russia has failed to promote its ‘Russian world’ in Ukraine with tanks. It will hardly be able to achieve it with ‘soft force’, too. As a matter of fact, the ‘Russian world’ is monotonous because it has no one but Russians. The Ukrainian world is diversity and freedom to be oneself”. In his opinion, this quality is the main reason why so many people who speak in different languages come to defend Ukraine.
Analysts maintain that Russia will continue aggravating the situation in Donbas particularly now when three pro-Russian television channels which in fact belong to Viktor Medvedchuk, an ally of the Russian President and a pro-Russian politician, have been closed. “There is one special feature in relationship between Medvedchuk and Putin. The latter perceives all attacks aimed against Medvedchuk as something personal rather than politics. So, I think, the real worsening of the situation is still ahead”, stressed Heorhiy Tuka, the former deputy minister for issues involving the temporarily occupied territories.
Meanwhile other experts believe that the main reason for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine lies in something else. They claim that not only the Kremlin but also most Russians are convinced that such entity as the Ukrainian people does not exist at all. Henceforth, the sovereign Ukrainian state has no right to exist.
In 2014, immediately following the annexation of Crimea, Russia began an armed aggression against Ukraine. The fighting involves the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on the one hand, and the Russian army and pro-Russian militants who control part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, on the other hand. Officially, the Russian Federation denies the fact of its invasion of Ukraine regardless facts and evidence presented by the Ukrainian side.
On July 22, 2020, the Trilateral Contact Group coordinated with the other side the regime of a full and comprehensive ceasefire in Donbas from the midnight of July 27. Since then, the Ukrainian side has regularly reported on cases of ceasefire violations by militants.
Since early February of 2021, the cases of injuries and deaths of Ukrainian servicemen have increased. For instance, on February 2, there were eight cases of the violation of the ceasefire regime along the frontline. Militants were firing from 120-caliber mortars, heavy machine guns and rifles. One Ukrainian soldier was wounded by a Russian sniper. Later he died at a hospital. On February 6, two Ukrainian servicemen were killed and four others were wounded. On February 7, an enemy sniper wounded a Ukrainian soldier. On February 10, seven more cases of the violation of the ceasefire were reported. One Ukrainian serviceman was wounded.
On February 2, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy enacted the decision about imposing sanctions on Taras Kozak, a legislator from the pro-Russian party “Opposition Platform For Life” and the owner of the three television channels. Although it is well known that pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk factually controls these channels. The sanctions will be in force for the next five years. The sanctions have been supported in the United States and the European Union.
According to Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the chief of the presidential office, the three closed television channels were part of the so-called Medvedchuk pool. Podolyak said that the channels had been openly and actively used as a tool of foreign propaganda in Ukraine.
The newspaper Voice of Ukraine
