Putin: We do not see a desire of our partners in Kiev to solve the problem of its relations with the southeast of Ukraine by a peaceful political process.

DPA/Moscow

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of lacking political will to solve the bloody conflict with pro-Russian separatists – just hours after he pleaded for new peace talks.

“We do not see a desire of our partners in Kiev to solve the problem of its relations with the southeast of Ukraine by a peaceful political process,” Putin told a conference of international Russia experts in Sochi that was broadcast on television.

The Russian leader warned that any attempt of a forceful solution will create an impasse.

If Ukraine wants to retain its territorial integrity, it needs to end the war immediately, he said.

Earlier yesterday, Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed in a telephone call that a fresh round of talks should soon be held by the so-called contact group.

The group, which consists of Russia, Ukraine and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), in September agreed a ceasefire with separatist leaders.

The separatists said yesterday that they were ready to take part in fresh talks.

The most effective way is to hold them after elections planned by separatists and Ukrainian authorities have been held, Andrei Purgin, a leader of the self-declared “Donetsk People’s Republic”, told Interfax.

Ukraine will hold parliamentary elections tomorrow, while the separatists have called elections in the districts they control for November 2.

Also yesterday, the European Union urged Russia to see that the ceasefire is fully implemented. Russia “should prevent any movement of military, weapons or fighters from its territory into Ukraine”, EU leaders said in a statement issued after a summit in Brussels.

Merkel said earlier during the summit that there are “serious deficits” with the ceasefire’s implementation and argued for the EU’s sanctions against Russia to be kept in place.

During their telephone call, Merkel and Putin also agreed that the truce needs to be observed, both leaders’ offices said.

Fighting of varying intensity has been ongoing, especially in Donetsk, where artillery fire was widely heard yesterday, according to city authorities.

Ukraine’s National Security Council said eight soldiers had been injured during the past 24 hours, the Interfax Ukraine news agency reported.

More than 3,600 people have been killed since the conflict began in April, according to UN figures.

The UN refugee agency said yesterday that nearly 824,000 Ukrainians have fled their homes.

Some 430,000 sought refuge within their country, while 387,000 have gone to Russia, William Spindler, a spokesman for the UN high commissioner for refugees, said in Geneva.

In addition, 6,600 Ukrainians had fled to EU countries by the end of September, he said.

Also yesterday, the EU extended until December 31 provisional trade concessions that have been granted to Ukraine in a bid to bolster the country’s battered economy.

The measures mirror the benefits Kiev will get from a free trade agreement that has been negotiated with the EU.

That deal’s implementation was postponed until January 2016 over concerns raised by Russia.

 

Putin accuses US of damaging world order, denies Russian empire ambitions

President Vladimir Putin accused the United States yesterday of making the world a more dangerous place by imposing a “unilateral diktat” in international diplomacy and denied Russia wanted to build a new empire.

In a speech laced with language reminiscent of the Cold War, Putin shifted blame for the crisis in Ukraine to the West and portrayed Russia as a strong power that would not be forced to beg the West to lift sanctions imposed over the conflict.

“Statements that Russia is trying to reinstate some sort of empire, that it is encroaching on the sovereignty of its neighbours, are groundless,” Putin told a group of political scholars known as the Valdai Club in a resort above the Black Sea city of Sochi, which hosted the Winter Olympics this year.

Warning that Washington was trying to “remake the whole world” around its own interests and that the risk of international conflicts was growing, he said: “We did not start this.”

Dismissing the US and European Union sanctions on Russia as a mistake, he said: “Russia will not be posturing, get offended, ask someone for anything. Russia is self-sufficient.”

Putin said the threat of arms control treaties being violated was growing and called for talks on internationally acceptable conditions for the use of force.

The speech included some of Putin’s fiercest rhetoric against the West since he first rose to power in 2000 and underlined how far apart Moscow and the West are on a range of matters.

The West has accused Russia of violating Ukraine’s sovereignty by annexing the Crimea peninsula and says it has sent troops and weapons to help pro-Russian separatists fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine. Moscow denies the accusations.

 

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