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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia would have a devastating impact worldwide. Meanwhile, Russia is evacuating its diplomats from Kyiv.
UN chief says the world is facing ‘a moment of peril’
Ukrainian government and bank websites target of cyber-attack
EU calls an emergency summit for Thursday, adopts Russia sanctions
Ukrainian national security council declares nationwide state of emergency
Russia begun evacuating its embassy in Kiyv
Germany summons Russian ambassador
Germany summoned the Russian ambassador to the Foreign Office in Berlin on Wednesday.
German news agency dpa reported that Foreign Office Political Director Tjorven Bellmann spoke to ambassador Sergey Nechaev about Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. No further details were available.
Earlier, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called EU sanctions against Russia “a first step” and warned more could follow.
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Baerbock: ‘Peace and freedom in Europe have no price tag’
Most Germans favor Merkel as mediator, oppose arming Ukraine
Around 68% of Germans are against supplying weapons to Kyiv, a new survey conducted by the INSA Institute has found.
Roughly 22% said they would support such a move.
Additionally, around 43% of Germans favor hitting Russia with economic sanctions over Moscow’s recognition of the self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk. About a quarter of respondents said they favored diplomatic sanctions, and 7% said they favored military sanctions.
A little over half of the respondents said they would like to see former German Chancellor Angela Merkel act as a mediator in the current crisis. Most respondents said current Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s response was “neither good nor bad,” while around 43% of Germans said Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s handling of the crisis was “quite bad.”
Around 1,000 people were surveyed for the poll.
UN chief warns of global impact of a Russian invasion
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that the world is “facing a moment of peril.”
He said it was time for “restraint, reason, and de-escalation,” in dealing with the Ukraine-Russia crisis.
“If the conflict in Ukraine expands, the world could see a scale and severity of need unseen for many years,” he said.
Guterres was speaking at the start of a General Assembly session on Ukraine.
He called Russia’s decision to recognize the separatist-controlled regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine as “independent states,” a violation “of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.”
“No one will be able to sit out this crisis if [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decides that he can move forward,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the UN meeting.
“Active diplomacy, strong political messages, tough economic sanctions and strengthening Ukraine can still force Moscow to abandon aggressive plans,” he said.
Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia warned the 193-member General Assembly that “no one intends to go softly, softly with any violators” of the peace in those eastern areas of Ukraine.