of who s to blame. translation: | u leave | the direct verbal assaults against us unanswered. now it s important to focus on how to avoid war and how to force ukraine to stop the shelling and provocations against donetsk and lu ha nsk. if we need to fight, we will fight. if we need to be peaceful, we will be peaceful. volunteers for ukraine s homeland security no strangers to russian attacks on their country now preparing to protect their families, their country, they say if that s what it takes. mark lobel, bbc news. we ve had some significant comments through from the german chancellor who is currently meeting the irish prime minister in berlin. let s hear what he said. he said we must
but elsewhere in ukraine and in the west, deep concern that moscow may now move its forces openly into eastern ukraine, and that the kremlin is set on a major escalation. ukraine s president zelenskiy summoned his cabinet on hearing mr putin s announcement. they discussed the situation. ukraine has consistently said it does not recognise what it considers to be the seizure of its territory around lu ha nsk and donetsk. our chief international correrspondent lyse doucet is in kyiv and she gave us this reaction to president putin s speech: this was watched around the world. yes, there was a domestic audience who saw the national security chief, intelligence chief trembling and stammering in front of president putin when he called them to ask for their opinions. and it was clear he only wanted to hear, what he
the question of neutrality is a de facto guarantee, l but the problem is if you have a situation of world war i, - a complete military stalemate l and then that might push putin, he will be quite happy- with the separation of east and west ukraine so that- will push him to compromise. in the sense, borisjohnson said this week that he thinks the terrible mistake was 2014 when the west did not do enough to respond to the annexation of crimea and having already accepted the part that ukraine is not part of ukraine any more, it s quite hard to go to war over let s say donestk and lu ha nsk. he s starting with crimea, but i will go back to 1999 and chechnya and then we go to aleppo and syria. we had all this stuff with ben wallace talking about appeasement at the beginning of the war. the appeasement began in 1999. it is as simple as that, when grozhny was levelled.
but the problem is if you have a situation of world war i, - a complete military stalemate l and then that might push putin, he will be quite happy- with the separation of east and west ukraine so that- will push him to compromise. in a sense, borisjohnson said this week that he thinks the terrible mistake was 2014 when the west did not do enough to respond to the annexation of crimea and having already aacepted that part that ukraine is not part of ukraine any more, it s quite hard to go to war over let s say donetsk and lu ha nsk. he s starting with crimea, but i will go back to 1999 and chechnya, and then we go to aleppo and syria. we had all this stuff with ben wallace talking about appeasement at the beginning of the war. the appeasement began in 1999. it is as simple as that, when grozhny was levelled. that is where the west fell
we want to have a ceasefire and we | also want to have the humanitarianj corridors to be opened to be able to evacuate civilians and to bring food and supplies to some of the besieged - cities like mariupol. unfortunately russians also understand it and use it - as their advantage to bend our will, to bend our delegation s will, to show the weak- points and press on them. so, we also have to discuss - with them how they will get out of our sovereign territory i and how our future system of architecture of our. security will be rebuilt. central to all this is the donbas region and specifically two areas, donetsk and lu ha nsk. they re in the east of the country. and remember, russia has recognised them both as independent. in recent days, we ve been told that russia is planning to focus their attentions there. this is the defence minister speaking today. translation: the first stage -