Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the West must be prepared to impose new sanctions on Russia for its military build-up on its country’s eastern border.
Zelensky conveyed this message to Trudeau in a telephone interview Tuesday morning, on the eve of a key meeting in Brussels between the alliance of 30 NATO countries and Russia.
The meeting aims to defuse the lingering tension between the West and the Kremlin as the Russian military massages on Ukraine’s eastern border, stoking fears of an invasion.
Russia has asked NATO to guarantee that it does not expand east into Ukraine, a request that the alliance and Ukraine itself categorically reject.
“The position of Western countries in dialogue with Russia must remain firm and decisive. We must be ready for the immediate introduction of a preventive package of sanctions against Russia to counter the aggressive intentions of the Kremlin, ”the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said, citing Zelensky’s words.
He reiterated to Trudeau that the West must not give in to Moscow’s demands to curb NATO expansion.
“No one other than Ukraine and NATO should influence the process of our integration into the alliance,” Zelensky said.
A Canadian account of the appeal was not immediately available.
Mr. Zelensky also urged Canada to extend its contribution of 200 troops to a NATO military training mission in Ukraine which is due to expire at the end of March.
The two leaders also “agreed on the need for joint efforts to secure adequate compensation” for the families of the 176 passengers who were killed when the Iranian military shot down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, there. two years. The majority of those killed came from Canada as well as Ukrainian, Swedish, British and Afghan nationals.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ukraine’s foreign minister said any NATO concession to Russia that it did not expand the alliance eastward would be a strategic defeat.
“The Russian Federation had started talks on so-called ‘security guarantees’ to raise the stakes to the maximum by making intentionally unacceptable demands,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement provided by the Russian Federation. Ukrainian Embassy in Ottawa.
“The situation appears all the more cynical as Russia demands security guarantees while its forces, more than 100,000 strong, brandish weapons on the borders of Ukraine, take Crimea hostage and fight in the Donbas , that the Russian special services undermine the security of Belarus’s borders with Poland and Lithuania and that the gas supply is transformed into an instrument of foreign policy, ”Kuleba added in the statement.
In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula after the ouster of its pro-Moscow leader and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the east of the country, where more than seven years of fighting has killed more than 14 000 people.
A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany brought an end to large-scale battles, but frequent skirmishes continued and efforts to negotiate a political settlement failed.
Zelensky on Tuesday met with French and German officials who traveled to Kiev after talks in Moscow the previous week to discuss the prospects of another four-way meeting, between leaders of Russia, Ukraine, of France and Germany, on the conflict.
“It is time to have substantive talks on the end of the conflict, and we are ready to take the necessary decisions at a new summit of the leaders of the four countries”, assured Mr. Zelensky.
– With information from the Associated Press.