Military escalation: Kuleba offers EU a plan to deter Russia

Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba at a meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council proposed a step-by-step plan on how to discourage Moscow from further escalation.

Kuleba wrote this on his Twitter account, Ukrinform reports.

“In today’s EU Foreign Affairs Council I briefed colleagues on Russia’s latest dangerous course. I proposed a step-by-step plan on how to discourage Moscow from further escalation. Key element: preparing a new set of sectoral sanctions. Individual ones are not sufficient anymore,” he wrote.

The minister noted that the meeting was held online.

As reported by Ukrinform, the Russian Federation has lately been building up troops near Ukraine’s state border in the north, east and south, as well as in temporarily occupied Crimea.

During an online meeting of the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Security and Defense on April 14, Ukrainian Defense Minister Andrii Taran said that Russia concentrated 56 battalion tactical groups with 110,000 troops along the Ukrainian border.

According to Taran, the real goals of Russia's increase in its military presence near Ukraine's borders may be attempts to force the Ukrainian government to make concessions in the negotiation process and to show readiness to use armed force.

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