Polish President Andrzej Duda will host the emergency summit of the Bucharest Nine (B9) group of countries, his foreign policy aide Jakub Kumoch told reporters on Tuesday.
The B9 group brings together nine NATO countries from Central and Eastern Europe: Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The group was set up in 2015 as an initiative by Poland and Romania.
The Polish president on Tuesday discussed the situation in Ukraine with his Lithuanian counterpart Gitanas Nausėda and Romania's Klaus Iohannis, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
The talks came after Russian President Vladimir Putin a day earlier recognised two breakaway areas in eastern Ukraine as independent and sent Russian troops to the two separatist regions to perform what the Kremlin described as “peacekeeping functions.”
Piotr Müller, the spokesman for the Polish government, said on Tuesday that Warsaw was in favour of hitting Russia with acute sanctions in response.
He added that Polish politicians and diplomats, including Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, were holding intensive talks on what action to take after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
Friday’s B9 summit in Warsaw will be part of these consultations, Müller said.
“These are NATO members from our region,” he noted. “We want to convey a strong message that B9 countries won’t agree to delicate sanctions in response to Russia’s aggression on Ukraine.”
US brands Russia’s moves ‘invasion’
Meanwhile, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman called Putin’s Monday decisions “the beginning of the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Her remarks on Tuesday came in a statement to the extraordinary meeting of the participating states of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Reuters news agency reported.
Sherman also said that the international community was "on the precipice of a dark and dangerous era.”
Also on Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking after a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council in Brussels, Belgium, the NATO chief said: “Every indication is that Russia is continuing to plan for a full-scale attack on Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg also called on Russia to “step back,” stressing that “it’s never too late not to attack.”
The NATO chief called the Ukraine crisis “the most dangerous moment in European security for a generation,” the IAR news agency reported.
Putin gets nod to send troops to eastern Ukraine
Russia’s upper house of parliament on Tuesday voted unanimously to allow Putin to deploy forces abroad on a “peacekeeping” mission, news agencies reported.
This paved the way for Putin to send troops to the two separatist-held regions of eastern Ukraine, which he recognised as independent on Monday, commentators said.
The Kremlin also announced that the Russian president had ratified friendship treaties with the two breakaway republics, Reuters reported. These documents allow Russia to build military bases there, deploy troops, agree a joint defence posture, and tighten economic integration, according to officials.
Meanwhile, Putin told reporters that the Minsk peace agreement on Ukraine no longer existed and that there was nothing left to fulfil, and put the blame for this on Kyiv, Reuters reported.
The Russian president also stated that Moscow had recognised the two breakaway republics within the boundaries of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions, large parts of which are controlled by Ukrainian government forces.
UK announces sanctions, military drills
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday imposed sanctions on five Russian banks and three wealthy individuals in response to Putin’s military incursion into Ukraine, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The three billionaires, including Gennady Timchenko, are close allies of the Russian president, Johnson said.
He promised that Britain “will not waver” and was ready to implement further “much, much tougher” action if the crisis heightened, news outlets reported.
Warning of a possible “full-scale war of aggression” on the part of Russia and “a protracted crisis,” the British prime minister said: “The United Kingdom will meet this challenge side by side with our allies, determined that we will not allow Putin to drag our continent back into a Hobbesian state of nature where aggression pays and might is right.”
However, the opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said the punitive package was not enough and led the calls for tougher sanctions, the IAR news agency reported.
Meanwhile, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced that troops from the Joint Expeditionary Force would soon hold military drills in northern Europe amid the Russian threat to Ukraine, according to IAR.
This UK-led group also includes Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands.
Netherlands to supply Ukraine with weapons
The Dutch government has announced it will supply Ukraine with weapons and military equipment, the defence24.pl website reported. The delivery is set to include 100 Barrett M82 anti-materiel precision rifles, together with 30,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as counter-battery radar systems and helmets.
Meanwhile, the leader of Poland’s Catholic Church, Wojciech Polak, on Tuesday called on the faithful to pray for peace in Ukraine, the IAR news agency reported.
Polak told Polish Radio: “I trust that thanks to joint and persistent prayers, we will manage to drive away the spectre of war and suffering for so many thousands of people.”
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, Reuters, defence24.pl