RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE WOULD BE BIGGEST WAR IN EUROPE SINCE 1945, JOHNSON SAYS

Sun 20 February 2022:

Russia is planning the largest war since 1945, according to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“The fact is that all the signs are that the plan has already in some senses begun,” he said in a BBC interview broadcast Sunday from the Munich Security Conference, after two Ukrainian soldiers were killed in attacks around rebel-held enclaves.

“People need to understand the sheer cost in human life that could entail,” he said, after previously indicating that the West would continue to support any Ukraine resistance after an invasion.

“I’m afraid to say that the plan we are seeing is for something that could be really the biggest war in Europe since 1945, just in terms of sheer scale.”

He also told broadcasters that he believed Putin’s invasion plan was “in motion” with the aggression in the Donbas region potentially a “prelude to bigger action”.

In other comments made while in Germany, Johnson warned that the “sheer scale” of the offensive being prepared by Moscow had not been seen for almost 80 years.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, meanwhile, used a separate interview to state that President Vladimir Putin “will not stop at Ukraine” as she argued he is looking to piece the Soviet Union back together.

The comments came as Ukraine’s military said two soldiers died on Saturday as violence escalated in the east of the country between government forces and rebels.

There are growing fears Russia could use the increase in tension in the separatist-held region as a pretext for an attack.

Hundreds of artillery shells exploded along the contact line between Ukrainian soldiers and Russia-backed separatists, and thousands of people were evacuated from eastern Ukraine, raising fears of a Russian invasion on Sunday.

Western leaders have warned that Russia is preparing to attack its neighbor, which is surrounded by about 150,000 Russian soldiers, warplanes, and equipment on three sides. Russia conducted nuclear drills in Belarus on Saturday and continues to conduct naval drills off the Black Sea coast.

For months, the US and many European countries have claimed that Russia is attempting to invent pretexts to invade. If that happens, they’ve threatened massive, immediate sanctions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has requested that Russian President Vladimir Putin select a location for a meeting between the two leaders to try to resolve the crisis.

Separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine ordered a full military mobilization on Saturday and dispatched more civilians to Russia, which has issued 700,000 passports to residents of rebel-held areas.

If the Kremlin orders an invasion of Ukraine, Johnson recommends that the West cut off Russian companies’ access to US dollars and British pounds.

Because Russia is one of the world’s top exporters of oil, gas, and metals, which are largely priced and settled in US dollars, denying Russian companies access to dollar markets could be devastating.

Putin has advocated for a reduction in reliance on the US dollar.

Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company, said in 2019 that it had fully switched the currency of its contracts from US dollars to euros in order to avoid US sanctions.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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