Russia’s President Vladimir Putin says he “informed” the leaders of France and Germany of the “real situation” in Ukraine in a three-way telephone call on Saturday, alleging various “gross violations of the international humanitarian law” by Ukraine.
President Putin, according to the Kremlin’s official readout of the conversation, accused “the Ukrainian army and police [of] extrajudicial killings of dissenters, hostage taking and the use of civilians as human shields, deployment of heavy weaponry in residential areas, in proximity to hospitals, schools, kindergartens, and so on” as the three leaders discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — which the Kremlin described more prosaically as a “military operation to protect Donbass”.
President Macron and Chancellor Scholz, whose governments dominate the European Union, were further “informed” that Ukrainian “nationalist battalions” have “regularly sabotage[d] rescue operations and threaten civilians when they attempt to evacuate” — a reference to the Russian position that ceasefires to extricate non-combatants from besieged cities such as Kharkiv (Kharkov) have failed due to Ukrainian sabotage rather than Russian shelling.
The Kremlin added that President Putin had “urged” the French and German leaders “to influence Kiev authorities so as to stop such criminal acts.”
The German foreign minister praised Serbia's UN vote against the war and the offer to host Ukrainian refugees, but she added that "joining the European Union means readiness to align with the positions of the Union" https://t.co/4YAkIuef2o
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 12, 2022
President Emmanuel Macron’s office has reportedly accused the Russian government of telling “lies” about Ukrainian actions during the war, describing the telephone call as “very frank and also difficult.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who recently succeeded the venerable Angela Merkel at the head of a left-liberal coalition government, has so far been less forthcoming about the supposed details of the three-way conversation, with his office saying merely that he and the French president had “called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and a diplomatic solution to the conflict” in a discussion which lasted some 75 minutes.
Scholz’s office said the talks were “part of an ongoing international effort to end the war in Ukraine” and that a decision not to release any further details at this time had been taken.
The German leader also spoke with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukraine's President Zelensky compared Russia to "ISIS terrorists" for allegedly kidnapping a Ukrainian mayor who is himself accused of funding "terrorist crimes" against civilians in the Donbas https://t.co/kUwI2FW9dT
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 12, 2022
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