Sending peacekeepers to Ukraine may lead to a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Wednesday.
The idea for sending an international peacekeeping mission to Ukraine to give it the means to defend itself came last Tuesday from the leader of Poland’s ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, after he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.
Kaczynski traveled in Ukraine’s embattled capital Kyiv along with the prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia in a show of high-level support for Zelenskyy, who briefed them on the war with Russia.
Along with Kaczynski, Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki, Slovenia’s Janez Jansa, and their Czech counterpart Petr Fiala were the first foreign leaders to visit Kiyv since the Russian invasion begun last month.
Kaczynski, who is seen as the main decision-maker in Poland pointed out that it is necessary to have a peace mission – NATO, possibly some wider international structure – which will operate on Ukrainian territory and will be able to defend itself.
He noted that the peacekeepers’ mission would strive for peace and give humanitarian aid but will also be protected by appropriate armed forces. It is likely that the issue will come up during Thursday’s EU-NATO leaders’ summits in Brussels with the participation of US President Joe Biden.
Lavrov dismissed on Saturday Kaczynski’s proposal as demagoguery, stressing that NATO must understand that they need to be realistic. Russian FM didn’t rule out that – if this decision were to pass – the majority of that peacekeeping force would be from Poland and it would take under control western Ukraine and Lviv with a plan to stay there for a long while.
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