MOSCOW: Russia slammed a plan for European peacekeepers to be deployed to Ukraine as ‘dangerous’ and dubbed Kyiv and its allies an “axis of war”, dousing hopes the plan could be a step towards ending the almost four-year war.
An initial 28-point plan which largely adhered to Moscow’s demands was criticised by Kyiv and Europe, and now Russia has slammed the attempts to beef-up protections for Ukraine should an elusive deal be reached.
Ukraine’s allies said they had agreed key security guarantees for Kyiv at a summit in Paris earlier this week, including a peacekeeping force.
But in its first comments since the summit, Moscow said the statements were far away from anything the Kremlin could accept to end its assault.
“The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement. – AFP
