Russia says more western arms would only prolong the Ukraine war
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With the West and its allies gearing up to send more advanced arms and ammunition to Ukraine, Russia on Tuesday said this move would only prolong the war, as Moscow continued to launch fresh strikes with over 80 missiles in the war-torn country and prepared to enlarge the war theatre.
As Moscow and Kyiv denounced each other as “terrorist state(s)” at an urgent United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting on Monday, Ukraine said at least 19 Ukrainians died and hundreds of others wounded in the latest Russian missile strikes.
Ahead of the G-7 crisis meeting on Tuesday, Russia expected more ‘confrontation’ with the West as the US and Germany vowed to send an advanced air defense system to Ukraine where 174 Russian soldiers were reportedly killed.
Meanwhile, Belarus said on Tuesday that its joint force with Russia is “purely a defensive” activity.
On Tuesday, the UN said Russia’s recent wave of attacks on Ukraine may have violated the laws of war and would amount to war crimes if civilians were deliberately targeted, said Ravina Shamdasani, the UN Human Rights office spokesperson, in Geneva.
Her statement came after the presidents of the Bucharest Nine Group of countries, accompanied by the presidents of North Macedonia and Montenegro, said the mass bombardments of Ukrainian cities by Russia make up war crimes under international law.
Reports said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in the Kazakh capital of Astana on the margins of a regional summit. Turkey, which has stayed neutral throughout the conflict in Ukraine, has good relations with its two Black Sea neighbors. Ankara has reiterated its call for a ceasefire at the earliest, saying the two countries were moving away from diplomacy as the war drags on.
Ahead of the UNGA session, and with tensions at a boiling point, UN chief Antonio Guterres described Russia’s attacks as an “unacceptable escalation of the war,” his spokesperson said.
US President Joe Biden, meanwhile, condemned the strikes in stark terms, saying they “demonstrate the utter brutality” of Putin’s “illegal war.”
But the Russian President vowed even more “severe” retaliation after the recent explosion that damaged a crucial bridge in Moscow-annexed Crimea.
“We do not and will never recognize the illegal so-called ‘referenda’ that Russia has engineered as a pretext for this further violation of Ukraine’s independence,” said Silvio Gonzato, a representative of the European Union.
And so, amid claims and counterclaims, and mayhem, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started on February 24, remains inconclusive.
