[ad_1]
Russian President Vladimir Putin is a man who likes to keep his options open, and the Ukraine crisis is no exception: As the Kremlin leader signals his readiness to engage on the diplomatic front, he is also strengthening a case for war, says CNN.
For example the situation in Donbas, territories in eastern Ukraine partially controlled by Russian-backed separatists. At a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday, Putin removed the letter “g” to describe the situation there.
“According to our estimates, what is happening today in Donbas is genocide,” Putin said.
Scholz withdrew, later telling reporters that Putin was “wrong” in using the term. But those comments were already in the public sphere – and Putin had heightened his rhetoric as well as NATO concern.
“There are a lot of Russian intelligence officers operating in Ukraine,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday. “They are present in Donbas and we have seen attempts to organize a pretext – to provide a justification for the occupation of Ukraine,” he added.
Russia denies having troops in Ukraine, and Putin last publicly acknowledged the presence of his operatives in Donbas in 2015, when pressure was raised on the issue by a Ukrainian journalist.
“We have never said that there are no people there who deal with certain issues, including in the military field, but that does not mean that regular Russian troops are present there,” he said. “Understand the difference.”
Putin’s complaints in Donbas are not new. He has repeatedly spoken of what he describes as violations of the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine and has stated that it is within Russia’s right to intervene militarily to protect them.
But Putin seems to be making an argument for his version of a “responsibility to protect”, no matter how remote the situation in Donbas is from Rwanda – where over 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were killed over 100 days in 1994 – or Srebrenica – where more than 7,000 predominantly Muslim men and boys were massacred in 1995.
The genocide call echoes Russia’s false claim that its neighbor, Georgia, committed genocide against civilians in the separatist republic of South Ossetia in August 2008. During that brief conflict, Russia launched a massive military incursion that went deep into the territory. Georgian, a scenario that worries the West today when it comes to Ukraine.
The Investigative Committee, Russia’s highest law enforcement body, took Putin’s comments a step further on Wednesday when it announced it had launched a criminal investigation into alleged evidence of what it called “indiscriminate bombing” of civilians in the Donbas region by Ukrainian forces since 2014.
In a press release accompanied by the language of political accusations, the Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case under Part 1 of Article 356 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which covers the ill-treatment of the civilian population and the use of prohibited means and methods. in an armed conflict.
The Investigative Committee statement echoed Putin’s talk of genocide, saying: “The intent to exterminate the people of Donbas is clear – the Russian investigation has recorded hundreds of such facts that qualify as evidence of the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare.” .
It’s clear why the Kremlin wants to change the subject: In 2015, for example, bombings blamed on Russian-backed Donbas separatists took the lives of at least 30 people in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
Since the start of the conflict in Donbas in 2014, thousands of civilians have been killed and injured in fighting, according to United Nations estimates. But the announcement of an investigation – not by an independent body and at the height of a confrontation with Ukraine – seems to be a clear political move, despite the truth of the allegations.
The concern of many observers of the Donbas conflict is that any explosion – a new explosion of fighting, an exchange of artillery fire – could become a pretext for more drastic action by the Russian military. Those concerns came to the fore on Thursday, as the Ukrainian armed forces and separatists controlling parts of eastern Ukraine reported new bombings in the region early Thursday.
The first video and images from CNN show that a preschool building in the territory controlled by the Ukrainians was hit by a shell on Thursday.
The school is three miles from what is known as the Contact Line, which separates the two sides. CNN has not determined who initiated the exchange of fire. Violations of the 2015 ceasefire agreement in the region occur regularly.
And then there is the serious issue of the legal status of the separatist regions of Donbas. Russia has never recognized the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) in Donbas as sovereign and independent states, although it has distributed Russian passports to people living there.
Russian lawmakers earlier this week called on the Russian president to recognize the separatist republics in the Donbas as independent. This also creates a possible situation where Russia may declare the need to respond to Ukrainian “aggression” against these countries.
Would that happen? Recognition of the DNR and LNR would effectively destroy the Minsk agreements, a package of measures that, for now, the Kremlin says is the only way to resolve the crisis in Ukraine – and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made it clear on Thursday. that Putin remains calm about it.
But creating more problems could also benefit the Kremlin: it expands the menu of options available to Putin.
top channel
[ad_2]
Source link