The United States detailed Thursday before the United Nations Russia’s alleged plans to justify and imminently launch an invasion of Ukraine, which would include the taking of Kiev, accusations that Moscow considered unfounded and dangerous.
In a last-minute move to underscore the seriousness of the crisis, the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, traveled to New York to speak before the UN Security Council, which had scheduled a meeting on Ukraine in advance.
“Over the past few months, without provocation or justification, Russia has amassed more than 150,000 troops around Ukraine’s borders. In Russia, Belarus, the occupied Crimea. Russia says it is reducing those forces (but) we don’t see that happening on the ground,” Blinken said.
According to the Secretary of State, the information available to the US. “clearly indicates that those forces, which include ground troops, aircraft, and ships, they are preparing to launch an attack on Ukraine in the coming days.”
alleged Russian plans
Blinken went on to describe how the US believes Russia is going to proceed, beginning with creating a “pretext” to justify its attack, which could take the form of a fake terrorist attack, an alleged discovery of mass graves, or even a real or fictitious attack with chemical weapons.
“Russia could describe this event as ethnic cleansing or genocide, making fun of a concept that we in this chamber do not take lightly,” he told the Security Council, warning that Russian media have already begun to spread some of these “false alarms”.
The next step, according to the US, will be government meetings at the highest level to respond to these alleged aggression and the start of the bombing of Ukraine, accompanied by a communications blackout and cyberattacks against key institutions.
“After that, Russian tanks and soldiers will advance on key targets that have already been identified and outlined in detailed plans. We believe that these targets include the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, a city of 2.8 million people,” Blinken said.
Russia accuses the US of escalating tension
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin, who before Blinken spoke had asked to prevent the meeting from becoming “a circus” with “unsubstantiated accusations saying that Russia is supposed to attack Ukraine”, later regretted the US statements.
“This is very unfortunate, I would say even dangerous,” Vershinin said, accusing the US of stirring up tension in an already very complex situation.
In the last hours, Russia distributed documents to the rest of the members of the Security Council denouncing alleged serious violations committed by Ukrainian forces, a movement that US sources pointed out as a possible justification for an invasion.
Meanwhile, Vershinin insisted that his country has no intention of invading Ukraine, although he devoted most of his speech to denouncing Kiev’s breaches of the Minsk Agreements.
Those pacts adopted from 2014 between Russia and Ukraine to try to pacify the situation in the Ukrainian east, and which included, among other things, a ceasefire, have been repeatedly violated by both sides, according to international observers.
The Council meeting to discuss the Minsk Agreements came just hours after an upsurge in clashes along the line of contact separating Ukrainian government troops from pro-Russian separatist militias backed by Moscow.
Between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning some 500 explosions were recorded in the area, which calmed down in recent hours, as the observation mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) told the Council.
international division
In today’s debate at the UN, the fracture that exists between the powers of the Security Council was once again clear, with the United Kingdom fully aligned with the United States and China pointing to the expansion of NATO and Washington’s attitude as the origin of the problem.
While, The countries of the European Union, led by France and Germany, denounced the calls in Russia to recognize the independence of the separatist provinces and underlined their full support for Ukrainian territorial integrity.
In addition, they expressed their concern about the accumulation of Russian troops near the border and made it clear that “any new military aggression by Russia against Ukraine would have enormous consequences and would carry unprecedented costs.”