The United States plays into the hands of opponents of settling the Donbas conflict by providing lethal weapons to Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.
SVETLOGORSK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th August, 2018) The United States plays into the hands of opponents of settling the Donbas conflict by providing lethal weapons to Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump signed the $717 billion national defense budget for 2019. The figure is 30 percent higher than the 2018 budget and includes $250 million for military aid to Ukraine, with $50 million allocated to lethal weapons supplies for the war-torn country.
"A separate item of expenditure is lethal weapons supplies to [Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko] regime, to a country which is factually in a state of a civil war. [The supplies], of course, play into the hands of those Ukrainian politicians who are not interested in a prompt settlement of the Donbas conflict," Zakharova said.
The United States has provided military aid to Ukraine on multiple occasions already. Back in February, US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch said that the United States had provided over $850 million in security assistance to Kiev since 2014.
Russia has repeatedly warned the United States against supplying weapons to the crisis-torn country. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the US military assistance to Ukraine also impedes implementation of the Minsk agreements on the conflict settlement.
In April 2014, Kiev launched a military operation against the self-proclaimed republics in the Donbas region which refused to recognize the new Ukrainian government that came to power in what they perceived to be a coup. The conflicting sides signed the Minsk peace accords in February 2015 to end the fighting in the crisis-torn region, but the situation has remained tense, with both parties accusing each other of ceasefire violations.
