Washington: Russia’s strategic nuclear forces held exercises overseen by President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, and Washington accused Russian troops massed near Ukraine’s border of advancing and being “poised to strike”.Still convinced that the Russians would impede the ex-soviet union ‘ at any time’, President Joe Biden planned to convene his top advisers on Sunday to discuss the crisis. Leaders of the G7 claimed to have seen no evidence Russia is reducing its military activity in the area and remained “gravely concerned” about the situation.
The military build up came demanding NATO prevent Ukraine from ever joining the alliance. Venting his frustration at a security conference in Munich, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the global security architecture was “almost broken”. He urged the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Germany and Turkey to meet to draw up new security guarantees for his country.
“The rules that the world agreed on decades ago no longer work,” Zelenskiy said. “They do not keep up with new threats … This is a cough syrup when you need a coronavirus vaccine, he said”.
The two Russian-backed, self-proclaimed republics in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions were hit by more than 1,400 explosions on Friday,. And almost 2,000 ceasefire violations were registered in the area on Saturday, a diplomatic source told.
Multiple explosions were heard overnight into Sunday in the centre of the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk, a reporter said. The blasts’ origin was not clear. There was no immediate comment from separatist authorities or Kyiv.