The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported “multiple shelling incidents along the line of contact in east Ukraine” earlier on Thursday, but is yet to release details.
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Nato is “deadly serious” about bolstering its eastern flank to counter Russian threats, the UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said.
Speaking before talks in Brussels between Nato defence ministers and their counterparts from Ukraine and Georgia, Wallace said:
We are deadly serious in how we’re going to face the threat that is currently being posed to both Ukraine and potentially to our security.
This is not a joke or a light matter. This is a real challenge to the stability of Europe.
One of the ways we can make sure there is no overspill or escalation is to provide resilience to our partners at Nato and that’s what we’re all doing.
Nato has asked its military commanders to draw up plans to send more forces to its eastern members, amid persistent fears of a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Wallace repeated that Russia was continuing to increase its forces along Ukraine’s border, despite claims of troop withdrawals from Moscow.
We’ll take them at their word but we’re going to judge Russia by their actions and at the moment, the troop buildup continues.
Shelling has been heard in the area of Donetsk airport and Elenovka village in eastern Ukraine, a witness has told Reuters.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said earlier on Thursday that “multiple shelling incidents” had taken place along the line of contact in eastern Ukraine, where government forces have been facing Russian-backed separatists since the outbreak of conflict in 2014.
Ukraine’s military on Thursday said Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine had fired shells at a village in the Luhansk region, hitting a kindergarten. The military said no injuries were caused.
The Russian-backed separatists had earlier accused government forces of opening fire against them four times in the past 24 hours and said they were trying to establish if anyone had been hurt or killed.
Russia–Ukraine relations refers to the relations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Currently, the two countries are in a state of war: the Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014 following the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
After the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the successor states' bilateral relations have undergone periods of ties, tensions, and outright hostility. In the early 1990s, Ukraine's policy was dominated by aspirations to ensure its sovereignty and independence, followed by a foreign policy that balanced cooperation with the EU, Russia, and other powerful polities.
Relations between the two countries have been hostile since the Revolution of Dignity, which toppled Ukraine's elected president Viktor Yanukovych and his supporters, because he refused to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union that enjoyed majority support in Ukraine's parliament. Ukraine's post-revolutionary government wished to commit the country to a future within the EU and NATO, rather than continue to play the delicate diplomatic game of balancing its own economic and security interests with those of Russia, the EU, and NATO members. In 2004 the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia had joined the EU, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007.
The Russian government feared that Ukraine's membership of the EU and NATO would complete a western wall of allied countries by restricting Russia's access to the Black Sea. With South Korea and Japan being allied to the US, the Russian government was concerned that Russia was being ring-fenced by potentially hostile powers. In the wake of the Revolution of Dignity, Russia backed separatist militias in the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic in a war in Ukraine's economically important Donbas region, on its eastern border with Russia. This region has a Russian ethnic majority. By early 2022 the Russo-Ukrainian War had killed more than 13,000 people, and brought some Western sanctions on Russia.
In 2019, amendments were made to the Constitution of Ukraine, which enshrined the irreversibility of the country's strategic course towards EU and NATO membership. Throughout 2021 and 2022, Russian military buildup on the border of Ukraine has escalated tensions between the two countries and strained bilateral relations, with the United States sending a strong message that invasion would be met with dire consequences for Russia's economy. Despite this, Russia has repeatedly denied having plans to invade Ukraine.
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