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Russian-backed separatist leaders in jap Ukraine ordered full navy mobilization on Saturday.
“I urge fellow countrymen who’re within the reserve to come back to the navy commissariats. Right this moment I’ve signed a decree on normal mobilization,” self-proclaimed Donetsk Individuals’s Republic chief, Denis Pushilin, mentioned in a video message.
One other separatist chief, Leonid Pasechnik, signed the same decree for the Luhansk Individuals’s Republic shortly afterwards.
On Friday, the breakaway areas began evacuating residents to Russia. They cite fears of an imminent assault by Ukrainian forces – an accusation Kyiv flatly denied.
Ukrainian authorities forces and pro-Russian rebels reported elevated shelling within the east over the previous couple of days.
Washington and different Western allies say it might kind a part of a Russian pretext to invade Ukraine.
“There’s merely no proof to those assertions and it defies fundamental logic to consider the Ukrainians would select this second, with nicely over 150,000 [Russian] troops arrayed on its borders, to escalate a years lengthy battle,”US President Joe Biden mentioned on Friday.
Russia has repeatedly denied that it has no plans to assault its neighbor.
Russia rejected claims it was accountable for cyber-attack on Ukraine
On Saturday, Russia additionally denied allegations that it was accountable for cyber-attacks on dozens of official Ukrainian web sites.
The US, UK, and Ukraine blamed Moscow of being behind the spate of distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults that briefly knocked out banking and authorities web sites.
“We categorically reject these baseless statements of the administration and observe that Russia has nothing to do with the talked about occasions and in precept has by no means performed and doesn’t conduct any ‘malicious’ operations in our on-line world,” the Russian embassy within the US wrote on Twitter.
Harris to push Western unity
US Vice President Kamala Harris was anticipated to warn Moscow on Saturday that an invasion of Ukraine might probably result in a fair larger NATO footprint on Russia’s doorsteps.
She would use her speech on the Munich Safety Convention in Germany to push for “power via unity,” a senior administration official who spoke on the situation of anonymity advised the Related Press.
She already touched on the theme on Friday when she declared “our best power is our unity” as she met with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on the sidelines of the convention.
The Baltic international locations have requested the US to extend its troop presence.
lo/dj (AFP, AP, Interfax, Reuters)
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