26th April, 2022
Russia’s top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov warned Ukraine against provoking World War III and said the threat of a nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated”.
Lavrov spoke as his country unleashed attacks against rail and fuel installations far from the front lines of Moscow’s new eastern offensive.
Meanwhile, the British Defense Ministry said Tuesday that Russian forces had taken the Ukrainian city of Kreminna in the Lukansk region after days of street-to-street fighting.
“The city of Kreminna has reportedly fallen and heavy fighting is reported south of Izium as Russian forces attempt to advance towards the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the north and east,” the British military said in a tweet.
It did not say how it knew the city, 575 kilometers (355 miles) southeast of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, had fallen.
The Ukrainian government did not immediately comment.
The U.S. has been rushing more weaponry to Ukraine and said the assistance from Western allies is making a difference in the 2-month-old war.
“Russia is failing. Ukraine is succeeding,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared Monday after he and the U.S. secretary of defense made a bold visit to Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Blinken said Washington approved a $165 million sale of ammunition — non-U.S. ammo, mainly if not entirely for Ukraine’s Soviet-era weapons — and will also provide more than $300 million in financing to buy more supplies.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin went further, saying the U.S. wants to see Ukraine remain a sovereign, democratic country, but also wants “to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine.”
Austin’s remarks appeared to represent a shift in U.S. strategic goals since earlier it said the goal of American military aid was to help Ukraine win and to defend Ukraine’s NATO neighbors against Russian threats.
In an apparent response to Austin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia has “a feeling that the West wants Ukraine to continue to fight and, as it seems to them, wear out, exhaust the Russian army and the Russian military industrial war complex. This is an illusion.”
Weapons supplied by Western countries “will be a legitimate target,” Lavrov said, adding that Russian forces were targeting weapons warehouses in western Ukraine.
Lavrov accused Ukrainian leaders of provoking Russia by asking NATO to become involved in the conflict.
NATO has effectively “entered into a war with Russia through proxies and is arming those proxies,” he said.
NATO forces are “pouring oil on the fire,” Lavrov said, according to a transcript on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
“Everyone is reciting incantations that in no case can we allow World War III,” he said in a Russian television interview.
Lavrov said he would not want to see risks of a nuclear confrontation “artificially inflated now, when the risks are rather significant.”
“The danger is serious,” he said. “It is real. It should not be underestimated.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter that Lavrov’s comments underscore Ukraine’s need for Western help: “Russia loses last hope to scare the world off supporting Ukraine. Thus the talk of a ‘real’ danger of WWIII. This only means Moscow senses defeat in Ukraine.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, its apparent goal was to seize Kyiv, the capital. But the Ukrainians, helped by Western weapons, forced President Vladimir Putin’s troops to retreat.
Moscow now says its goal is to take the Donbas, the mostly Russian-speaking industrial region in eastern Ukraine.
Both sides say that campaign is underway, but Russia has yet to mount an all-out ground offensive or make any major breakthroughs.
On Monday, Russia focused its firepower elsewhere, with missiles and warplanes striking far behind the front lines to try to thwart Ukrainian supply efforts.
Five railroad stations in central and western Ukraine were hit, and one worker was killed, said Oleksandr Kamyshin, head of Ukraine’s state railway.
The bombardment included a missile attack near Lviv, the western city near the Polish border that has been swelled by Ukrainians fleeing the violence elsewhere.
Source: Wire reports