Estonia’s foreign minister, Eva-Maria Liimets, is in Washington today, and talked to theGuardian about her assessment of the situation, saying Russia’s “heavy military buildup is also a sign of readiness to attack its neighbours”.
Liimets also looked at the implications of a permanent Russian military presence in Belarus. She said Alexander Lukashenko had become reliant on Moscow since he overturned the presidential election 2020 in order to hold on to power.
Liimets said:
Unfortunately, Belarus has limited its choices by itself, due to the stolen elections in 2020. They have limited access, limited communication, with other neighbouring countries and with other countries in Europe and and also in the world.
If Russia keeps its troops in Belarus, Liimets said:
Then it changes the security environment in our region, and also changes the balance of power. And, of course, then NATO has to make another assessment of its security planning and defence planning and then increase the defence and deterrence posture of the eastern flank.
She pointed out that the alliance is due to adopt a new strategic outlook at this year’s summit in Madrid, with the heightened threat in mind. But so far she thought it had responded well to the crisis.
I think that Nato has behaved really, very decisively, and has showed its very united approach to understanding the threat. And so I think that NATO is really in good shape and the transatlantic bond is very strong.
Our political correspondent, Aubrey Allegretti, reports on the UK government’s decision to axe the “golden visa” scheme:
The “golden visa” system that allows wealthy foreign investors a fast track to live in the UK has been axed amid concern about applicants acquiring their wealth illegally and the growing strain on diplomatic relations with Russia.
The home secretary, Priti Patel, announced that the scheme would end with immediate effect to help to stop “corrupt elites who threaten our national security and push dirty money around our cities”.
Launched in 2008, the “tier 1 investor visa” programme allowed people with at least £2m in investment funds and a UK bank account to apply for residency rights, along with their family. The speed with which applicants were allowed to get indefinite leave to remain was hastened by how much money they planned to invest in the UK: £2m took five years, while £10m shortened the wait to just two.
The scheme had been under review for some time, and its opponents were planning to push for the visas to be suspended through an amendment to the nationality and borders bill in the House of Lords, due to be debated later this month.
According to the anti-corruption watchdog Spotlight, 6,312 golden visas – half the number of all those issued – had been reviewed for “possible national security risks”.
Russia’s military aggression towards Ukraine presents a clear threat to the rules-based international order and Nato will do its best to deter this, Canada’s defence minister, Anita Anand, said.
Speaking on a conference call with reporters from Brussels, Anand said:
Nato is a defensive alliance … we cannot and we will not stand idly by while a nation seeks to erode international norms that have kept us safe since the end of world war two.
Russia said it had ordered the expulsion of US deputy chief of mission, Bart Gorman, from the countryin response to the US expulsion of a senior official at the Russian embassy in Washington.
In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry said:
The American diplomat was indeed ordered to leave Russia, but strictly in response to the unreasonable expulsion of the minister-counsellor of our embassy in Washington, despite his status as a leading official.
The mother of a child whose nursery was struck by Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region of Ukraine said she “still can’t calm down”, Agence France-Presse reports.
The woman, who agreed to identify herself only as Natalia out of fear for her safety, said she and her husband rushed to the kindergarten in a panic the moment they heard about the strike.
She told the news agency:
I was very scared. The kindergarten has no bomb shelter. It only has thick walls. But they even managed to puncture those. I still can’t calm down.
Kindergarten worker Natalia Slesareva was thrown against a door by the shell blast that blew a hole in the wall of a two-storey building being used by 20 children and 18 staff.
She told AFP:
The children were eating breakfast when it hit. It hit the gym. After breakfast, the children had gym class.
So another 15 minutes, and everything could have been much, much worse.
A view from the shelled kindergarten in the settlement of Stanytsia Luhanska, Ukraine. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A Ukrainian soldier stands next to the damaged wall after the reported shelling of a kindergarten. Photograph: Aleksey Filippov/AFP/Getty Images
Boris Johnson has claimed the shelling of a nursery school in the Donbas region of Ukraine by Russian-backed separatists was a “false-flag operation” aimed at discrediting the Ukrainian government.
According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) there were “multiple shelling incidents” on Thursday morning across the frontline in eastern Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, accused the Russian side of “provocative shelling”.
Speaking on a visit to RAF Waddington, in Lincolnshire, the UK prime minister said: “Today, as I’m sure you’ve already picked up, a kindergarten was shelled in what we are taking to be – well, we know – was a false-flag operation designed to discredit the Ukrainians, designed to create a pretext, a spurious provocation for Russian action.
Boris Johnson says kindergarten attack in Donbas was 'false-flag operation' – video
“We fear very much that that is the kind of thing we will see more of over the next few days.”
A false-flag incident is one in which its origin is disguised, usually in an attempt to provoke retaliation.
The Kremlin accused US president Joe Biden of stoking tension by saying he expected Russia to invade Ukraine within days,RIA news agency reported.
Separately, Russia accused Ukraine of repeatedly violating a 2015 ceasefire agreement aimed at bringing peace to the breakaway Donbas region.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergey Vershinin, told the UN security council: “Ukraine stubbornly refuses to implement the provisions of the Minsk agreements.”
He accused Kiev of repeated attacks on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, causing “thousands of victims.
“Attempts to place the blame on Russia are futile and baseless” and aim at “shifting of the blame away from Ukraine,” Vershinin said.
He also rejected as “a baseless accusation” claims by the US and European allies that Moscow is seeking to fabricate a pretext to invade Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the website of Russia’s foreign ministry went back online after going down for a few hours. The Tass news agency cited the ministry as saying that the website had gone down due to technical issues, without elaborating.
Before today’s UN security council session, the Russian mission circulated documents alleging Ukrainian forces “have been exterminating the civilian population of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk”.
About 14,000 people have been killed since fighting started in eastern Ukraine and Russia seized Crimea in 2014. Three thousand of the dead have been civilians, who have been killed on both sides of the front line, according to international monitors.
The Russian document focuses on casualties on the Moscow-backed rebel side of the line, but does not make claims of the number of dead, just saying “thousands of civilians were wounded or killed”, saying they were killed by Ukrainian government forces using “explosive weapons, small arms and light weapons”.
The Russian documents say that Russian investigators “obtained information about spontaneous unmarked mass graves that were arranged outside specially designated places out of necessity due to the ongoing hostilities”.
It seems that when Russia is talking about mass graves, it is talking about the hasty burial of dead where they fell by their own families and communities. It does not seem to be a claim that the alleged mass graves were dug by Ukrainian forces to disguise war crimes. Nor does it make claims of executions of civilians.
It does, however, make the claim that the civilian casualties from the fighting amount to a “genocide of the Russian-speaking population of Donbas”.
The UK’s foreign minister, James Cleverly, has accused Russia of “patently failing to live up to the international commitments that it has made around military transparency”.
Speaking to the UN security council, Cleverly said the whole world can see “Russia has deployed the forces necessary to invade Ukraine and now has them readied for action”.
With regards to Russian rhetoric of a withdrawal, he said it is “all too clear that the opposition is in fact true and the Russian military build-up continues”.
Cleverly said:
Russia’s actions are clearly designed to intimidate, to threaten and to destabilise Ukraine. We know it, they know it, and the international community knows it.
If Russia is serious about a diplomatic resolution “then it needs to show up to the diplomatic meetings and commit to meaningful OSCE [Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe] talks”, seeing as they did not show up on Wednesday and “they do not intend to show up on Friday”.
The UK condemns the actions taken by the Russian Duma to propose the Russian president recognise the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent, Cleverly added.
Russia is using “increasing disinformation” to “fabricate a pretext” to invade Ukraine, he said.
We are seeing increasing disinformation about events in the Donbas that are straight out of the Kremlin playbook.
It is therefore clear that we are at a critical juncture to prevent further escalation.
James Cleverly addresses the United Nations Security Council, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, listens. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP
Russia will target specific groups of Ukrainians, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, continues.
He told the UN security council:
Conventional attacks are not all that Russia plans to inflict upon the people of Ukraine. We have information that indicates Russia will target specific groups of Ukrainians.
It is unclear exactly what the secretary of state is talking about here, but earlier unconfirmed versions of Russian war plans, in particular those published in the German Bild newspaper, suggest that potential Ukrainian resistance leaders would be rounded up and put in camps.
Blinken said:
We’ve been warning the Ukrainian government of all that is coming. And here today, we are laying it out in great detail with a hope that by sharing what we know with the world, we can influence Russia to abandon the path of war and choose a different path while there’s still time.
