MOSCOW: Germany’s foreign minister warned of a “dangerous situation” in eastern Ukraine ahead of crunch Moscow talks yesterday as Nato flagged a build-up of Russian troops in Ukraine and on its border.
The meeting between Frank-Walter Steinmeier (pictured) and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov came as the West keeps up pressure on Moscow over Ukraine after last week’s bad-tempered G20 summit which President Vladimir Putin left early.
Steinmeier’s visit to Moscow is the first by a senior European minister since July and comes with relations between the West and Russia at a post-Cold War low over the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
At the start of their meeting, the German minister warned of a “dangerous situation developing” in Ukraine, adding: “It is important to make major efforts to ensure that a European split does not take place”.
He touched down hours after Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg spoke of a “very serious build-up” of troops, artillery and air defence systems inside Ukraine and on the Russian side of the border.
“Russia has a choice. Russia can either be part of a peaceful negotiated solution or Russia can continue on a path of isolation,” Stoltenberg said outside an EU defence ministers’ meeting
in Brussels.
Russia denies any military involvement in the unrest in east Ukraine which has killed over 4,100 people in the past seven months, according to the United Nations. Steinmeier, whose country is playing the lead role in mediating the crisis with Russia, flew to Moscow after meeting Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk in Kiev.
There, he urged all sides to honour a peace plan agreed in Minsk in September, including a frequently violated ceasefire which has stopped most fighting but not some flare-ups at key strategic locations.
After the meeting, Yatsenyuk repeated calls for US-backed negotiations with Russia on “neutral territory”. But Moscow quickly told Kiev that it needed to deal directly with pro-Russian rebels in the region instead.
As the unrest in eastern Ukraine drags on into the ex-Soviet state’s harsh winter, Ukraine’s military said yesterday that fresh clashes over the past 24 hours between government forces and rebels killed six of its soldiers.
Russia rejects claims that it provides military backing for the heavily armed separatist rebels in the east.
It also denies that it supplied the anti-aircraft missile which downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in July, killing 298 people, an incident which sharpened the West’s focus on the unrest.
A team overseen by Dutch experts completed a third day of work to recover debris from the wreckage of the doomed Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight and eventually return it to the Netherlands.
As the race to defuse the conflict steps up, the EU on Monday agreed to blacklist more Kremlin-backed rebels in Ukraine.
However, it stopped short of fresh sanctions against Moscow, saying there was hope of restarting dialogue.
New European Union diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said foreign ministers meeting in Brussels had raised the possibility of her visiting Moscow to “re-engage in a dialogue” in search of a solution.
Before yesterday’s meeting with Steinmeier got under way, Lavrov said that direct talks were crucial “to avoid fuelling rumours... and get honest answers”.
Ahead of his German counterpart’s arrival, Lavrov also said his government hoped “that the ‘point of no return’ has not yet been crossed” in Russia-Europe relations.
In comments seen as unusually forthright, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that the Kremlin “will not prevail” and called on Western leaders not to lose hope in what may be a long struggle over Ukraine.
On Monday, Russia engaged with Germany and Poland in a tit-for-tat series of expulsions of diplomats which has further heightened tensions between the 28-nation EU and its vast eastern neighbour.
AFP
