Supporting Ukraine will lead to war, Russian envoy tells Australia

Australia’s participation in Western-led support for Ukraine will only ‘lead to war’, warns Russian ambassador Alexey Pavlovsky.

Australia’s participation in Western-led support for Ukraine will only “lead to war”, says Russian ambassador Alexey Pavlovsky, who denied the massing of 120,000 troops on the Ukrainian border was a prelude to invasion.

During a press conference in Canberra on Friday, Mr Pavlovsky also denied Russia would cut off gas supplies to Europe as the Ukraine crisis intensifies.

“Russia has never failed in its obligations as a gas supplier to ­Europe, you could check,” he said. “Russia always … abides by its economic obligations.”

Asked about reports Australia could help meet the shortfall if Russia did cut off supplies, he said “if Australia wants to enter the European market, good luck”.

“We are champions of free trade,” he said. “We think that … nations should flourish from trade. We are against politicisation of trade.”

Mr Pavlovsky said the soldiers massed on the border with Ukraine were a “warning” against Kiev doing “crazy things”.

“When the Western countries, now including Australia, are ­expressing their support, either verbally or in material terms, or by sending arms to Ukraine, they embolden Kiev to continue their line of sabotage, to not implementing the decisions supported by the UN Security Council,” Mr Pavlovsky said, referring to the Minsk Protocol – an agreement struck in 2014 to end war in the Donbas region of Ukraine.

“That’s why we think that such expressions of support are very dangerous. Because they lead to provocations, they lead to war.”

The Australian government this week announced it would pull out all non-essential consular staff from Ukraine, and has ­offered non-military assistance to Kiev, including help defending the country against cyber attacks.

Mr Pavlovsky claimed Australians were being misled as to the true situation on the Ukraine border. “Australians definitely are entitled to a more meaningful understanding of the situation than comic book-style propaganda like Batman versus Joker,” he said, adding that “we never showed disrespect to the sovereignty of Ukraine”.

Australian Strategic Policy ­Institute executive director Peter Jennings described Mr Pavlovsky’s denials that Russia was planning an invasion as “a brazen lot of nonsense”. “The ambassador is drawing on Russia’s Leninist roots – the old principle that the bigger the lie, the more you can get way with it,” he said. “How you can characterise 120,000 troops built up across the border as anything other than an absolute threat is a lie of epic proportions.”

Mr Jennings said Russian President Vladimir Putin “has a very small chance to walk back from the brink of a conflict which would be disastrous for Russia”.

“They may imagine some short, lightning-quick strike on Kiev. But it would turn out to be a protracted and bloody conflict,” he said.

But Mr Pavlovsky said gathering troops on the border and letting them “sit there for months” was a “funny way to prepare an invasion”. He repeatedly referred to the Minsk Protocol to excuse the build-up, saying the position of the Russian government was to have “special status for these regions inside Ukraine”.

“We never showed disrespect to the sovereignty of Ukraine,” he said. “In fact we should go … back in history. (The cities of) Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence and had a referendum held there, it was the will of the population to separate themselves from the Ukraine.”