US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that a ceasefire cannot be declared in the war in Ukraine unless it is part of a “just and lasting” peace deal that includes Russia’s military withdrawal. .
Blinken said that “a ceasefire that simply freezes the current lines” and allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin “to consolidate control over the territory that he has taken, and rest, rearm and strike again, that is not a just peace. and enduring”. “
Russia must also pay a share of rebuilding Ukraine and be held accountable for launching its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, Blinken said in a speech during a visit to Finland, which recently joined NATO and shares a long border with Russia.
Allowing Moscow to keep a fifth of the Ukrainian territory it had occupied would send the wrong message to Russia and “other potential aggressors around the world,” according to Blinken.
Russia, however, wants any talk to address Ukraine’s request to join NATO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pushed for the country to become a member of the Western military alliance that the Kremlin sees as a threat.
“Naturally, this (issue) will be one of the main irritants and potential problems for many, many years to come,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Blinken said Washington was ready to support other countries’ peace efforts, including recent proposals from China and Brazil. But any peace agreement must uphold the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.
The United States is a major Western ally and supplier of weapons to kyiv to help push back Kremlin forces.
China, which claims to be neutral and wants to serve as a mediator but has supported Moscow politically, urged countries on Friday to stop sending weapons to Ukraine.
In kyiv, air defenses shot down more than 30 Russian cruise missiles and drones on Friday in the sixth airstrike on Moscow in six days, local officials said.
The Ukrainian capital was attacked simultaneously from different directions by Iranian-made Shahed drones and cruise missiles from the Caspian region, senior Kiev official Serhii Popko wrote on Telegram.
A 68-year-old man and an 11-year-old boy were injured in the attack, with private houses, outbuildings and cars damaged by falling debris, according to Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s Office.
A recent wave of attacks on the capital has strained residents and tested the strength of Ukraine’s air defenses, while Kiev officials plan what they say is a forthcoming counter-offensive to push back forces of the Kremlin 15 months after its full-scale invasion. kyiv was targeted by drone and missile strikes for 17 days last month, including daytime strikes.
However, Moscow’s strategy could backfire, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
The air campaign is aimed at “degrading Ukraine’s counteroffensive capabilities, but… Russian prioritization of Kiev is likely to further limit the campaign’s ability to significantly constrain Ukraine’s potential counteroffensive actions,” the air campaign said in an assessment. Thursday night.
Ukrainian air defenses intercepted all 15 cruise missiles and 21 attack drones targeting Kiev on Thursday night, Ukraine’s chief of staff Valerii Zaluzhnyi said.
Ukraine’s presidential office said on Friday that at least four civilians were killed and 42 wounded in the past 24 hours.
The Moscow-appointed governor of Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, said Friday that three people were killed and four injured, including a 3-year-old girl, by Ukrainian attacks in the region.
The day before, Ukraine said a 9-year-old girl and her mother were killed in kyiv by a Russian missile barrage before dawn.
Meanwhile, Russia’s border regions once again came under attack from Ukraine. Recent cross-border raids have also shaken those regions of Russia and put the Kremlin on its guard.
That could be a Ukrainian strategy to disperse Russian forces before a counteroffensive begins.
“Russian commanders now face an acute dilemma of whether to (strengthen) defenses in Russia’s border regions or reinforce their lines in occupied Ukraine,” the UK Defense Ministry said on Friday.
Air defense systems shot down “several Ukrainian drones” overnight on Thursday in the southern Russian Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, regional governor Roman Starovoit wrote on Telegram.
In the neighboring Bryansk region, which also borders Ukraine, regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said Ukrainian forces shelled two villages on Friday morning. No casualties were reported.
Two drones also attacked power facilities in Russia’s western Smolensk region, which borders Belarus, in the early hours of Friday, authorities said.