The meeting of the heads of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Group of Seven (G7) countries began on Saturday, February 19, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. This is reported by the agency Kyodo.
Foreign ministers from the G-7 major developed countries began an emergency meeting on Saturday to discuss diplomatic efforts to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
According to journalists, after the talks, representatives of the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, as well as the European Union, will issue a joint statement calling for defusing tensions around Ukraine.
The meeting of the foreign ministers of the G7 countries was announced by the agency on February 16. Then it was noted that the topic of negotiations should be the situation around Ukraine.
At the same time, Russia refused to participate in the Munich Conference. As the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova emphasized, in recent years this platform has been increasingly transformed into a “transatlantic forum”, losing objectivity and inclusiveness.
On February 19, the diplomat stressed that Western countries are ignoring the problems of the armed conflict developing in eastern Ukraine. She pointed out that the situation in the Donbass requires real, not imaginary, help and support.
The day before, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed concern about the current escalation in the Donbass and called on the Ukrainian authorities to sit down at the negotiating table with the self-proclaimed republics. He once again stressed that the key to the restoration of civil peace in Ukraine is the implementation of the Minsk agreements, which are ignored by Kiev.
The situation on the line of contact in Donbass escalated on February 17. The DPR and the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) reported heavy shelling by Ukrainian security forces, including with heavy weapons. At the same time, Kiev announced the shelling of the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The republics announced a general mobilization.
On Friday, February 18, the heads of the LPR and DPR, Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin, announced that the authorities had begun evacuating residents of the republics to Russia in connection with the shelling. Pushilin also said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would soon order the military to go on the offensive in order to implement the plan to invade the territory of Donbass. In the evening of the same day, the first buses with refugees began to arrive in the Rostov region.
At the same time, Western politicians and media representatives continue to spread numerous speculations about a possible Russian “invasion” of Ukraine. The Russian side has repeatedly denied such statements. Moscow emphasized that it was not hatching plans for an “invasion” of Ukraine, and that all measures for the combat training of troops were carried out within Russian territory.
Source: IZ
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
