Moscow: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has entered its seventh day on Wednesday, with a huge deployment of Russian tanks and armoured vehicles surrounding the capital, Kyiv, and heavy shelling there and in other big cities.
While the international community has announced several stringent measures to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has hit back saying, its key security demands have not been made by the West, especially the US that could have avoided the bloodshed.
What are the key Russian demands in the war with Ukraine?
In his first public comments since December about the brewing Russia-Ukraine crisis, Putin slammed the US and the West for not meeting his key demands to avoid a full-scale military conflict with Ukraine that has now threatened European security. Russia’s Foreign Ministry had released the eight-point draft treaty in December last year along with a warning that “ignoring its interests would lead to a “military response” similar to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
1. Russian leader put forward a highly contentious list of security guarantees that Moscow wants the West to agree to in order to lower tensions in Europe and defuse the crisis over Ukraine. In a joint news conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán following their meeting in the Kremlin, Putin said that the West has ignored Russia’s demands that NATO not expand to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet countries.
2. Another key demand from Russia is that NATO should limit its deployment of troops and weapons to the alliance’s eastern flank, in effect returning the allied forces to where they were stationed in 1997, before an eastward expansion, which would include much of eastern Europe, including Poland, the former Soviet countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Balkan countries.
3. President Putin further said that Moscow wants a guarantee from Ukraine that it will not enter the US-led NATO.
4. Russia has also demanded that NATO rule out further expansion, including the accession of Ukraine into the alliance, and that it does not hold drills without previous agreement from Russia in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, in Caucasus countries such as Georgia or in Central Asia.
5. Moscow also calls for the two countries US & Russia – to pull back any short- or medium-range missile systems out of reach, replacing the previous intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty that the US left in 2018. Vladimir Putin has demanded that the West provide Russia with “legal guarantees” of its security.
What is happening in Ukraine and how are NATO allies reacting?
Day 7th of the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II has found Russia increasingly isolated. Western officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to overthrow Ukraine’s government and replace it with a compliant regime, reviving Moscow’s Cold War-era influence.
The United States and European Union have levied sanctions on Russia’s biggest banks and its elite, frozen the assets of the country’s Central Bank located outside the country, and excluded its financial institutions from the SWIFT bank messaging system, but have largely allowed its oil and natural gas to continue to flow freely to the rest of the world.
Sanctions experts expect Russia to try to mitigate the impact of the financial penalties by relying on energy sales and leaning on the country’s reserves in gold and Chinese currency. Putin also is expected to move funds through smaller banks and accounts of elite families not covered by the sanctions, deal in cryptocurrency and rely on Russia’s relationship with China.
With Russia playing such an outsized role in global energy markets as the third-largest oil producer, the International Energy Agency’s 31 member countries agreed on Tuesday to release 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves, half of that from the United States, to send a strong message to oil markets, that supplies won’t fall short due to the invasion.
Canada’s foreign minister, Melanie Joly, said Tuesday that her country will refer Russia to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes over the Ukraine invasion. The move will speed up an investigation by the court’s top prosecutor.
The fighting in Ukraine
The Russian military has shelled several key sites in Kyiv and in the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens of others. Among the major sites hit were Kyiv’s main TV tower and holocaust memorial.
Although Ukrainian forces still control Kharkiv and the coastal cities of Kherson and Mariupol, all three are encircled, according to the UK Ministry of Defense.
What’s happening in Ukraine’s major cities?
Russian shelling struck central Kharkiv’s Freedom Square just after sunrise Tuesday, badly damaging a regional administration building and other structures, and killing at least six people and wounding dozens of others, Ukrainian officials said.
It was the first time the Russian military hit the center of the city of 1.5 million people, though shells have been hitting residential neighbourhoods for days. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed a Russian missile and called the attack a war crime, “It’s frank, undisguised terror. … Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget.”
Hours later, Russian shelling struck Kyiv’s main TV tower and holocaust memorial, killing five people and injuring five others, according to Ukrainian officials. The blast knocked TV broadcasts off the air for a short time.
Where is that massive Russian convoy?
The Russian military convoy threatening Kyiv and its nearly 3 million residents is far bigger than initially thought, with satellite images showing it occupying much of a 40-mile (64-kilometre) stretch of road north of the capital. The convoy was no more than 17 miles (25 kilometres) from the city centre on Monday, according to satellite imagery from the Maxar company.
How many people have fled Ukraine?
The UN refugee agency said Tuesday that about 660,000 people have fled Ukraine for neighbouring countries since the invasion began. Agency spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said, “At this rate, the situation looks set to become Europe’s largest refugee crisis this century.”
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has said the UN expects the total to reach 4 million in the coming weeks. Poland has seen the most refugees, with Hungary, Romania and Moldova also accepting tens of thousands. Germany’s national train company issued a special free ticket for Ukrainian refugees to reach relatives.
What’s happening to the Russian economy?
Sanctions are “going to cause the Russian economy to collapse,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told France Info radio on Tuesday.
Nations have blocked some Russian banks from the SWIFT international payment system and are restricting Russia’s use of its massive foreign currency reserves.
Russia’s central bank has taken drastic steps to prop up the plunging Ruble but foreign investment is flooding out of the country. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said Tuesday that the government had readied measures to temporarily restrict foreign investors from divesting Russian assets, saying the step would help them make ‘a considered decision’ rather than succumb to political pressure of sanctions.
Oil companies such as BP and Shell have pulled out of their stakes in Russian energy ventures. Norwegian Oil and Gas, an association for oil and supplier companies in the world’s third-largest natural gas exporter, followed suit Tuesday by suspending two Russian companies.
And the French energy conglomerate TotalEnergies said it wouldn’t fund any new projects in Russia, but it stopped short of abandoning its holdings there. Apple announced that it stopped selling its iPhone and other products in Russia as part of a corporate crackdown over the invasion of Ukraine. Other major tech companies have also curtailed their business in Russia, but Apple’s actions could particularly sting because its products are prized by many consumers and businesses.
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