We lack weapons to defend ourselves: Ukrainian ambassador in UK

LONDON

The Ukrainian ambassador in the UK said Thursday that his country is lacking weapons to defend itself.

Ukraine has sufficient manpower and is presently engaged in a real struggle against a Russian attack, Vadym Prystaiko said in a news conference at the Embassy building in London.

But lacking sufficient weapons, Ukraine is willing to accept any kind of support it can get, he said.

Prystaiko also said that Ukrainians were convinced that Russia would attack at some point. “This is why we wanted to join NATO,” he said.

The Donbas crisis and Russia's military intervention

Ukraine’s February 2014 “Maidan revolution” led to President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country and a pro-Western government coming to power.

Russia then illegally annexed Crimea, and separatists declared “independence” in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Donbas in eastern Ukraine, both of which have large ethnic Russian populations.

Clashes took place between Russian-backed separatist forces and the Ukrainian army. The 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements, signed in Moscow with the intervention of Western powers, tried to stop the conflict but cease-fire violations continued and as of February, 14,000 people had lost their lives in the conflict.

Late last year, Russia made headlines with the deployments of tens of thousands of troops on the border with Ukraine.

The US said Russia was preparing for an invasion, but Moscow denied it. Despite the threat of Western sanctions, Moscow recognized the two regions as 'independent' on Monday, Feb. 21 and started a military intervention Feb. 24 into Ukrainian territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the operation's aims are to protect people “subjected to genocide” by Kyiv and to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine. He called on the Ukrainian army to lay down its arms.​​​​​​​