Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that any decision by the United States to supply defensive weapons to Ukraine would fuel the conflict in eastern Ukraine and possibly prompt pro-Russian separatists to expand their campaign there.
On a visit to Kiev last month, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said he was actively reviewing sending lethal weapons to Ukraine to help it defend itself, an option that previous US president Barack Obama vetoed.
Ukraine and Russia are at loggerheads over a war in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and government forces that has left more than 10,000 people dead in three years.
Kiev accuses Moscow of sending troops and heavy weapons to the region, which Russia denies.
Putin, answering a question after a Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit in China about the possibility of the United States supplying Ukraine with heavy weapons, said it was for Washington to decide whom it sold or gave weapons to, but he warned against the move.
“The delivery of weapons to a conflict zone doesn’t help peacekeeping efforts, but only worsens the situation,” Putin told a news briefing. “Such a decision would not change the situation but the number of casualties could increase.”
In comments likely to be interpreted as a veiled threat, Putin suggested that pro-Russian separatists were likely to respond by expanding their own campaign.
“The self-declared (pro-Russian) republics (in eastern Ukraine) have enough weapons, including ones captured from the other side” said Putin. “It’s hard to imagine how the self-declared republics would respond. Perhaps they would deploy weapons to other conflict zones.”
Putin also said Russia intended to draft a resolution for consideration in the United Nations Security Council, suggesting armed UN peacekeepers be deployed to eastern Ukraine to help protect ceasefire monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) there.
“I consider the presence of peacekeepers – one could call them not peacekeepers, but people who ensure the safety of the OSCE mission – to be completely appropriate,” Putin said.
“It would help resolve the problem in eastern Ukraine,” he added, saying that a slew of preconditions would need to be met before any such deployment happened.
Some 600 international OSCE observers are on the ground in eastern Ukraine, but their presence has failed to stop fighting in a conflict.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel cautiously welcomed the announcement, saying that Putin had “up until now” refused to countenance a UN mission “to assure a ceasefire is put in place”.
“If this really constitutes an opportunity then we have to seize it,” he told lawmakers in Berlin.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said Kiev, which has long called for the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the eastern conflict zone, was “prepared to work on this issue”.
“The Ukrainian mission in New York has been instructed to hold relevant consultations with delegations at the United Nations Security Council,” it said in a statement.
But Kiev insisted it would have to give the green light to the force and that any deployment needed to be accompanied by a withdrawal of “all occupying troops” and help re-establish control of the rebel-held border with Russia.
“There can be no discussion of any military or other personnel from the side of the aggressor on Ukrainian territory in the guise of peacekeepers,” the statement said.
Ukraine believes external peacekeepers should be deployed throughout separatist-held territory and on the sections of the Ukraine-Russia border that are not under Kiev’s control.
Putin: The delivery of weapons to a conflict zone doesn’t help peacekeeping efforts, but only worsens the situation.
