United Kingdom warns Russia plotting to invade Ukraine and install puppet leader
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is considering a plan to invade Ukraine and oust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by force, according to British officials.
“We have information that indicates the Russian Government is looking to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv as it considers whether to invade and occupy Ukraine,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s team said Saturday. “The former Ukrainian MP Yevhen Murayev is being considered as a potential candidate.”
That allegation raises the prospect of a Russian military operation more ambitious than many observers have feared. Prominent former U.S. officials previously have surmised Putin might be planning to broaden Russian holdings in eastern Ukraine.
“It would never work,” Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy for the war in Ukraine, told the Washington Examiner
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Ukrainian public opinion has turned against Moscow in the years since the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine. Truss accused five different former Ukrainian officials of “maintain[ing] links” with Russian intelligence officers, adding that “some of these have contact with Russian intelligence officers currently involved in the planning for an attack on Ukraine.”
One of the five, former Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council deputy head Vladimir Sivkovich, was sanctioned by the United States on Thursday for allegedly participating in "Russia’s dangerous and threatening campaign of influence and disinformation in Ukraine,” as U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said.
“The information being released today shines a light on the extent of Russian activity designed to subvert Ukraine and is an insight into Kremlin thinking,” Truss said. "Russia must de-escalate, end its campaigns of aggression and disinformation, and pursue a path of diplomacy.”
That accusation raises the salience of the Russian deployment into Belarus
U.S. and Western European countries increased their military presence in NATO-allied countries such as the Baltic states and Poland in response to Russia annexing Crimea in 2014 and backing an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Putin has portrayed the latest crisis as a consequence of NATO’s decision to allow those countries to join the alliance, rather than a function of Russian aggression against Ukraine. Russian diplomats maintain the crisis can be averted only if the U.S. and Western European countries agree to cut their military partnership with the Eastern European members of NATO.
Lukashenko’s truculent statement suggests some willingness to participate in a clash in Ukraine, to the surprise of observers who have doubted he would want to play a meaningful role in such a crisis.
“His comments might be kind of preparation of the ground for further diplomatic escalation, which would be needed to allow him, or give him some pretext, to take part [in] the conflict ... or serve as a launchpad,” said Atlantic Council visiting fellow Petr Tuma, a career Czech diplomat, told the Washington Examiner. “He’s getting into it. He’s becoming a tool, an instrument in Putin’s hands.”
President Joe Biden’s administration allowed Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia to donate U.S.-made weaponry to the Ukrainian military, the three Baltic states announced Friday, and British officials likewise have provided new armaments. Western officials also have vowed to impose new economic sanctions on Russia, if Putin proceeds.
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“As the U.K. and our partners have said repeatedly, any Russian military incursion into Ukraine would be a massive strategic mistake with severe costs,” Truss said.
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