At least 4,000 out of as many as 10,000 Western military instructors that have been sent to train the Eastern European nation’s soldiers in Ukraine and support its fighting in the Donbass are Americans, Moscow has claimed on Friday.
According to Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova, the foreign military personnel’s presence is a sign that Ukraine is preparing for a military solution to the ongoing standoff with the eastern Donbass region’s two self-declared breakaway republics, which has now been going on for eight years.
Pointing they’re not just hypocrisy or double standards, Zakharova believes the claims foreign trainers are in Ukraine to help deter Russian aggression are a blatant lie that amounts to a combination of blasphemy and mockery.
Underscoring that the foreign trainers are directly responsible for the events taking place in the Donbass, she accused Kyiv and its Western partners that, instead of bringing an end to the civil war, they disingenuously justify the instructors’ presence with alleged defense and containment of Russian aggression.
Zakharova rejected as false-sounding Ukrainian officials’ statements insisting they are trying to de-escalate the situation, pointing that the Zelensky administration’s pumping up Ukraine’s defense budget by 20% could only indicate that Kyiv is gearing up to use military force to resolve the Donbass conflict.
Addressing the parliament, Ukraine PM Denis Shmygal announced plans to increase the country’s defense budget to nearly $12 bln next year allocated, as she claims, for a war against their own citizens, so no one can reasonably expect peace, Zakharova concluded.
Meanwhile, the nearly 7,000 ceasefire violations recorded by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in the past two weeks snow that the situation along the line of contact in Donbass continues to worsen.
Russia blames the Ukrainian side for failing to uphold its end of the bargain in line with the Minsk Accords Russia and Ukraine signed in 2014 and 2015 by refusing to negotiate with the separatists., effectively preventing the agreement to be put into effect
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