Washington — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said “gas lights” were threatened by Ukraine and NATO to justify Russia’s growing troops near the border with the former Soviet Republic. He accused him of imposing a “wrong story.”
Blinken was at the State Department to lower temperatures between Russia and the West prior to next week’s meeting of US and Russian diplomats in Europe, and early Friday after a virtual meeting with NATO’s foreign ministers. I addressed the press.
Blinken said Russia has worked for years to undermine Ukraine’s democratic system, interfere with its politics, block energy and commerce, and instill distrust of propaganda and disinformation.
According to Blinken, Russia has deployed nearly 100,000 troops near the border with Ukraine, “planning to mobilize twice that number in a very short order,” and Ukraine is trying to cause conflict. Justified doing so with “wrong information” that there is.
“It’s like saying that a fox had to attack a poultry house, because its inhabitants somehow pose a threat. Blinken said Russia’s 2014 seizure of the Crimean Peninsula. I have seen this gas lamp before, citing the support of separatists in the Donbas region.
“The idea that Ukraine is an invader in this situation is ridiculous,” Blinken said, adding that Moscow “at the same time promoted the false story that NATO is threatening Russia.”
However, diplomatic solutions are still possible and desirable, and there was an area of potential progress at next week’s meeting, Blinken said.
“We reaffirm next week that we are ready to increase transparency, take new risk mitigation measures and resume efforts to address the nuclear and traditional threats to European security,” he said. rice field. “But again, it has to be a two-way path.”
Simon Lewis
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