‘On cusp of all-out war’: Peter Dutton’s warning for Ukraine-Russia
Defence Minister Peter Dutton issued a warning for Ukraine after US President Joe Biden indicated Russia’s invasion was just days away.
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Defence Minister Peter Dutton has revealed there are no plans to send Australian troops into an imminent war in Ukraine.
Mr Dutton gave an ominous warning about a looming Russian invasion on Friday, saying he believes the world is “on the cusp now of an all-out conflict”.
Despite Moscow denying it is planning to invade Ukraine, US and NATO intelligence suggests Russia is ramping up its presence on the border and preparing to attack.
Mr Dutton said Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the process of “executing the final stages of his plan” to invade.
“I think it’s tragic, and we’ll see terrible scenes unfolding and it’s obvious that Ukraine’s been under cyber attack for some time,” Mr Dutton told the Nine Network.
“The Russians have amassed ships in the Black Sea, got troops coming in from different directions and you would expect that President Putin, who obviously can’t be taken at his word, is manufacturing some sort of trigger.”
When asked if he thought it was a “fait accompli”, Mr Dutton said every sign indicates “that that’s the case”.
“I mean, you can hope for an 11th-hour miracle. There are lots of European leaders who have tried to avert this but it seems President Putin is pretty intent on his action and direction,” Mr Dutton said.
“That really is going to result in the loss of life, the loss of innocent life and we’ve seen it before in Eastern Europe. We don’t want it repeated but we live in a very uncertain world.”
But despite the all but inevitability of escalation, Mr Dutton ruled out sending Australian troops.
“We work closely with the US and the UK and our partners … but if you look at Australia’s involvement, it’s a long way away,” Mr Dutton said.
“We haven’t been asked for troops, so we have no intention of sending troops. This is an issue NATO and Europe needs to deal with and those European leaders really. need to step up and put even more pressure on to Russia to stop them.”
Mr Dutton’s ominous warning comes in the wake of US President Joe Biden saying intelligence suggested Russia was “engaged in a false flag operation to have an excuse to go in”.
“Every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine and attack Ukraine,” Mr Biden said.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Russia’s false flag operations, including the shelling of a Ukrainian kindergarten, was designed to discredit the Ukrainians.
“The picture is continuing to be very grim,” Mr Johnson said.
“We fear very much that that is a thing we will see more of over the next few days.”
RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE ‘DAYS AWAY’
School teachers were injured and children evacuated in a Kindergarten bombing labelled a “false flag” attack by Russian-backed separatists as a pretext for a military response.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the United Nations Security Council to warn of more false flag operations, possibly with chemical weapons, as Russia continued down its “path to war”.
Russia, meanwhile, expelled the US Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission from Moscow and threatened retaliation if the US did not withdraw all its forces from Eastern and Central Europe.
It came as US President Joe Biden predicted a Russian invasion in “the next several days”, adding that the Kremlin has moved in more troops despite claiming otherwise.
“Every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine, attack Ukraine,” he said.
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin the “certainly troubling” reports of multiple attacks in Eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbass region were being investigated.
“We even see them stocking up their blood supplies,” Mr Austin said. “I know first hand you don’t do these sorts of things for no reasons.”
The White House said an additional 7,000 Russian troops were moved to region.
In his speech to the United Nations, the US Secretary of State said Russia had amassed more than 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders with the capability to conduct a “massive military assault”.
”We are laying it out in great detail with the 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 is still time,” Mr Blinken said.
“We don’t know exactly the form it will take. It could be a fabricated so-called “terrorist” bombing inside Russia, the invented discovery of a mass grave, a staged drone strike against civilians, or a fake — even a real — attack using chemical weapons.”
His comments came after the second-most senior official at the US Embassy in Moscow, Deputy Chief of Mission Bart Gorman, was expelled from Russia.
No reason was given for the move, but Russia separately sent a list of demands to US ambassador John Sullivan, according to Russian news agency Tass.
The letter included demands that the US withdraw all its forces from eastern and central Europe, propose how Ukraine will be barred from NATO, and end weapons from being delivered to Ukraine.
Russia Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin told the UN Security Council that it was Ukraine responsible for “thousands of victims” and was attempting to shift the “blame away”.
Ukraine’s Joint Forces Operati has blamed pro-Russian Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) accused of shelling the Stanytsia Luhanska village kindergarten.
Three staff suffered concussions, while another two civilians and a Ukraine soldier were injured in separate attacks across the region.
“The shelling of a kindergarten in Stanytsia Luhanska by pro-Russian forces is a big provocation,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Twitter on Thursday.
The shelling of a kindergarten in Stanytsia Luhanska by pro-Russian forces is a big provocation. It's important that diplomats & the @OSCE remain in 🇺🇦, their monitoring activities are an additional deterrent. We need an effective mechanism for recording all ceasefire violations.
— Володимир ЗеленÑький (@ZelenskyyUa) February 17, 2022
Joint Forces Operation said in a statement that the Russian-backed “terrorists” fired a total of 32 shots from 122mm heavy artillery, leaving half the village without electricity and 170 residences without gas.
“It should be noted that the enemy continues to use propaganda methods of hybrid war to accuse the Armed Forces of shelling civilians and hide own insidious actions,” the Joint Forces Operation said in a statement.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the reported shelling of a kindergarten in eastern Ukraine “was a false flag” carried to create a pretext for Russian military action.
“A kindergarten was shelled in what we … know was a false flag operation designed to discredit the Ukrainians, designed to create a pretext, a spurious provocation for Russian action,” he told British media.
UKRAINE ACCUSED OF OPENING FIRE
Separate reports of fire from grenade launchers, mortars and machine guns in eastern Ukraine have been reported in a statement released by “representatives of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic”, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday evening.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Kiev, said these sorts of skirmishes are a daily occurrence but he added: “There is a connection here to the warnings that have been given by the US and NATO about a possible pretext for major action by Russian forces massed around Ukraine’s borders … all it needs is one incident which could be an excuse for Russia to take action, not necessarily a full invasion but action in the disputed areas held by the Russian-backed separatists.”
It comes after Ukraine staged military drills and defiant displays of flag-waving patriotism on Wednesday as Western powers warned Russia is continuing to mass forces for a possible invasion.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky watched troops training with some of their new Western-supplied antitank weapons on a range near Rivne, west of the capital.
The demonstration of Ukrainian firepower contrasted with images on Russian state media that were said to show Moscow’s forces bringing an end to a major exercise in occupied Crimea.
In Rivne, a row of vehicles was destroyed by simultaneous missile test strikes and armoured vehicles manoeuvred and fired on the yellowing moorland, while in Kiev hundreds of civilians marched in a stadium with an enormous national banner.
“I see beautiful manoeuvres,” Zelensky told officers.
“I thank you for defending our state. When I see you I have confidence in the future and in our present moment.”
The “Day of Unity” displays came as the Kremlin called for “serious negotiations” with Washington, and European leaders pushed hard for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.
But NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, hosting the alliance’s defence ministers in Brussels, dismissed suggestions that the threat on the border had diminished.
“We are of course monitoring very closely what Russia does in and around Ukraine. What we see is that they have increased the number of troops and more troops are on their way,” he said.
And US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC News: “What we’re seeing is no meaningful pullback.”
On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden said a Russian invasion of Ukraine remains “very much” a possibility, challenging the Kremlin to prove it has ordered a meaningful number of troops back to barracks.
He added that the United States had not yet verified any withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s borders, and that “analysts indicate that they remain very much in a threatening position”.
He warned the US was “ready to go” with crippling sanctions if Russia invaded, but in an address from The White House, said, “We should give the diplomacy every chance to succeed’.”
He then delivered a message to the Russian people.
“To the citizens of Russia: you are not our enemy and I do not believe you want a bloody, destructive war against Ukraine,” Biden said.
His comments came as the Kremlin claimed some deployed forces were beginning to return to their bases, after a build-up of an estimated 130,000 troops on the Ukraine border spurred fears of an invasion.
“Units of the Southern and Western military districts, having completed their tasks, have already begun loading onto rail and road transport and today they will begin moving to their military garrisons,” Russian defence ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova went one step further, lampooning the West in a tweet.
“February 15, 2022, will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired,” she tweeted, in reference to White House claims an invasion would start from that day.
Ukraine’s foreign affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded with scepticism.
“We in Ukraine have a rule: we don’t believe what we hear, we believe what we see,” he wrote on Twitter.
“If a real withdrawal follows these statements, we will believe in the beginning of a real de-escalation.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in a final move to avert a war that could engulf the whole of Europe.
He said Russia “of course” did not want war and appeared willing to look at solutions to ease tensions.
The “solutions” was a reference to Moscow seeking a guarantee Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO, claiming membership would challenge the security of its citizens and, ironically, was likely to see Western troops massed on Russia’s border.
Mr Scholz said any membership to NATO by Ukraine was “not the order of the day”.
“Everyone has to take a step back and realise that we cannot have a military conflict over a question that is not on the agenda,” he said.
Mr Putin in a joint press conference with Mr Scholz said: “We are ready to work further together. We are ready to go down the negotiations track.
But on assurance about Ukraine and NATO, Mr Putin was sceptical.
“They are telling us it won’t happen tomorrow,” Mr Putin said.
“Well, when will it happen? The day after tomorrow? What does it change for us in the historic perspective? Nothing.
“We want to solve this issue now as part of negotiation process through peaceful means.”
Meanwhile, while a shot had yet to be fired, the Ukraine military was on Wednesday under cyber attack, with its defence ministry and two major banks targeted, affecting payments and banking apps.
Kiev blamed Moscow for the assault, saying it was meant to cause mass disruption.
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Originally published as ‘On cusp of all-out war’: Peter Dutton’s warning for Ukraine-Russia
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