Ukraine Says Russia Is Trying To Provoke Ukraine's Military To Attack
By Donald Standeford, Correspondent - Follow -
Date Published: February 19, 2022 04:30PM UTC
Last Modified: February 19, 2022 04:30PM UTC
UKRAINE - Ukrainian security official Oleksiy Danilov stated on Friday that Russia is attempting to stage provocations in eastern Ukraine and trying to provoke a response out of Kyiv. Danilov stated that Ukraine will remain peaceful despite this in order to diffuse the current tensions with Russia.
Speaking along with Danilov, Minister for Integration of the Temporary Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk stated that Russia is attempting to push Ukraine to making concessions and stated that Russia is refusing to hold peace talks in order to ease the current tensions.
Oleksandr Pavlyuk, the head of the Ukrainian army command in eastern Ukraine stated that there is a big chance that these provocations by Russia could eventually lead to civilian casualties.
According to Reuters, A Russian UAZ jeep was confirmed to have exploded outside of the government building for the self-proclaimed separatist republic of Donetsk.
"Everything that is being stoked up today by the Russian Federation through its proteges on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions is an attempt to provoke our armed forces, our troops into responses that they really wanted us to make" Danilov stated. "There are no orders to liberate our territories by force".
Danilov reiterated what the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been saying, that a full-scale invasion on Ukraine is not likely but that the country is prepared for further escalations.
In the meantime, Russia has been evacuating citizens from eastern Ukraine who currently hold a Russian passport. Russia has recently been issuing passports to residents living in Eastern Ukraine. Danilov said that Ukraine was willing to receive them instead and called on the international community to enable a 'wider corridor for civilians to cross into government territory' according to Reuters.
She urged Germany and France to help strengthen the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) which is a mission that monitors conflicts in eastern Ukraine.
"The Russian occupiers are escalating the situation, creating an informational background against which moods of panic begin. undermine the situation, to force us to make concession" she said.
"I want to tell those people who are now deciding what to do, I tell those people who are in the temporarily occupied territory ... Come to us ... We are waiting for you, we will create all possible conditions so that you have a place to live, to eat, so that you feel that you are not alone".
