Ukraine is requesting more weapons from West
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Ukrainian FM Dmitry Kuleba announces that Ukraine's Chargé d'Affairs in Moscow will return to the country and asks the West to send additional weapons to "confront" Russia.
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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said Tuesday that the Chargé d'Affairs of Ukraine in Moscow will return to the country, considering that severing relations with Russia is in the interest of Ukraine.
He also asked the West to send additional weapons in order to "confront" Russia. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister asked Britain to provide his country with "defensive" weapons, noting that Ukraine would resort to all diplomatic methods to "protect" the country.
He indicated that Ukraine would contact other nations regarding supplying Kiev with weapons, accusing Russia of backing out of the Minsk agreements.
Kuleba alleged that Russia is looking for a response to "provocations", and spreading panic, stressing that relations with Russia are lower than they were previously.
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister added that relations with Russia should have been severed in 2014, adding that he had previously submitted a request to the President to sever ties.
For his part, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused Russia of planning an attack on Ukraine since it recognized Donbass.
Stoltenberg announced that NATO has 100 planes on high alert. In a news conference, the Secretary-General disclosed that NATO continues to ask Russia to back down and urged Russia to "choose the path of diplomacy."
On Tuesday, the G7 foreign ministers pledged their full support to Ukraine, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said.
After a joint call with her counterparts, Truss tweeted that the G7 ministers "strongly condemn Russia's violation of their international commitments."
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister asked the European Union for a pledge that Ukraine will join it in the future, explaining that he called on the European Union to put aside all hesitations, reservations, and skepticism surrounding European capitals and to give Ukraine a promise to join it in the future.
Earlier, the Russian President declared the independence of the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), after Ukraine's attacks on the region for the past three days.
Russia sees that Ukraine is violating the Minsk agreements by not holding dialogue with the leaders of the two self-proclaimed republics and launching offensives against them. Moscow had several times urged Kiev to comply with the accord it signed in 2014.
Rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia were also caused by NATO refusing to guarantee Moscow that Kiev would not be given alliance membership, and Putin brought up NATO's intervention using Ukraine's constitution. "Ukraine's constitution does not allow foreign military bases, but they bypassed it. They call the NATO base 'a mission'," he said.
