Chief of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group on Donbas settlement, Leonid Kravchuk, says that Ukraine should be ready to repulse Russian aggression at any given moment.
The comment came as Kravchuk spoke with one of Ukraine's TV channels about today's losses in Donbas where four soldiers were killed in an enemy attack, also addressing a claim voiced by Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov about Russia's highly likely attack to seize Ukraine's forward positions in the area where the battle unfolded on Friday, March 26, an UNIAN correspondent reports.
"I stand by the position that Ukraine must be ready to fight back at any minute. We must be aware that Russia won't stop until it's stopped by various means – not only by Ukraine, but also by the international community, by applying all kinds of sanctions, all kinds of diplomatic pressure," Ukraine's first president said.
As Kravchuk noted, Russia must understand that living in a global world and failing to comply with international legal norms means becoming an aggressor state, a state that doesn't want to live by civilized rules.
Ukraine should be ready for a possible escalation in Donbas, Kravchuk said, adding that "it's hard for me to say, how and when it'll happen."
"Recently, Putin said they would have more questions to the territories that had once been handed to Ukraine 'not entirely legally'. That is, he is talking not only about the current occupation of Crimea and Donbas; he, it turns out, may have more territorial claims. The world sees it. Fortunately, today both Europe and the United States are moving from harsh assessments to concrete action. We must be ready to build our own defenses," added Kravchuk.
Background
On March 26, as a result of shelling by Russian occupation forces near the settlement of Shumy, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another two – injured.
