- Russia warns US against arming Ukraine
- US eye ammunition for howitzers, tanks and grenade launchers
- UK to dispatch ambulances, fire engines and medical supplies
LVIV, Ukraine/Kyiv, April 26 – Russia urged the world not to underestimate the significant risks of nuclear war, which it wants to reduce, and warned that Western conventional weapons are legitimate targets in Ukraine, where in the East fighting raged .
“The risks are now significant,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian state television, according to a transcript of an interview on the ministry’s website.
“I don’t want to artificially increase these risks. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we mustn’t underestimate it.”
Lavrov was asked about the importance of avoiding World War III and whether the current situation was comparable to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a low point in US-Soviet relations.
Russia has lost its “last hope of stopping the world from supporting Ukraine,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted after Lavrov’s interview. “It just means that Moscow senses defeat.”
During a visit to Kyiv, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin pledged more military aid to Ukraine.
But Moscow’s ambassador in Washington urged the United States to halt supplies and warned that Western arms would fuel the conflict. Continue reading
Lavrov said: “NATO is essentially engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”
Russia’s two-month invasion of Ukraine, the largest attack on a European state since 1945, has left thousands dead or injured, reduced cities to rubble and forced more than 5 million people to flee abroad.
Moscow is calling its actions a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and the West see this as a false pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression by President Vladimir Putin.
Russia has not yet conquered any of the largest cities. Their forces were forced to withdraw from the outskirts of Kyiv in the face of fierce resistance.
“It is obvious that every day – and especially today, when the third month of our resistance has begun – everyone in Ukraine is worried about peace, about when it will all be over,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Monday evening.
“There is currently no easy answer to that.”
The U.S. State Department on Monday used a declaration of urgency to authorize the potential sale of $165 million worth of ammunition to Ukraine. The Pentagon said the package could include artillery ammunition for howitzers, tanks and grenade launchers. Continue reading
The United States is scheduled to host an expected gathering of more than 40 countries this week for Ukraine-related defense talks that will focus on arming Kiev, US officials said.
Britain said all tariffs on goods entering the country from Ukraine under an existing free trade deal would be scrapped and it would send new ambulances, fire engines, medical supplies and funds for health professionals to help emergency services.
Putin on Monday said the West had failed to divide Russian society and accused him of inciting Kyiv to plan attacks on Russian journalists, in comments dismissed by Ukraine’s security service.
Just a few weeks ago, the capital, Kyiv, was a front-line city under curfew and bombardment, with tens of thousands of soldiers on its northern outskirts and residents sheltering from artillery in its subway stations.
Today, the nearest Russian soldiers are hundreds of miles away and normal life is returning to the capital, with Western leaders visiting and diplomats returning.
Blinken said US diplomats would come to the western city of Lviv first and should be back in Kyiv within a few weeks. Bridget Brink, now US Ambassador to Slovakia, will be the envoy. Continue reading
But away from the capital, war rages in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russia launched a massive offensive last week.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its missiles destroyed six plants that powered the railways used to deliver foreign weapons to Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbass region. Reuters could not verify the report. Continue reading
Russian forces on Monday continued to bomb and shell the huge Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, where militants are cowering in a city devastated by a siege and bombardment, Ukraine’s presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych said.
Moscow said it was opening a humanitarian corridor to let civilians out of the facility, but Kyiv said no agreement had been reached and asked for help from the United Nations to reach one as “initiator and guarantor”. Continue reading
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine had undermined evacuation efforts and no one left the steelworks via the humanitarian corridors on Monday.
Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, told reporters a ceasefire was not a good option and would only allow Ukraine’s armed forces to regroup, although it was not his decision.
The General Staff of Ukraine also reported Russian shelling of the second-biggest city of Kharkiv in the northeast and towns and villages in the south, but said attacks on three settlements were repelled.
Additional coverage by Reuters journalists; Writing Costas Pitas; Adaptation by Cynthia Osterman and Rosalba O’Brien