Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the authorization of a military operation in Ukraine. The information was given by the Reuters news agency, citing the Russian media, in the early hours of this Thursday (24), at local time, late Wednesday night in Brazil.
According to the statement, Putin said he could not tolerate further threats from his neighbor and that the circumstances called for decisive action by Russia in eastern Ukraine, known as the Donbass.
The Russian president defended the option for the operation to “protect the people”. According to him, the intention is not to occupy Ukrainian territory.
He urged soldiers from the neighboring country to put down their weapons and go home and said Russia would react in the event of outside interference.
The responsibility for any bloodshed, he said, “will be in the conscience of the Kiev regime.”
The announcement came just as an emergency UN Security Council meeting was debating the crisis. At the opening of the meeting, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made a clear request to the Russian leader. “If an operation is being prepared, I really say from the bottom of my heart: stop your troops from attacking Ukraine. Give peace a chance. Many people have already died.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Putin said he was willing to negotiate a diplomatic solution to the crisis with the West, as long as his country’s “interests and security” were respected. For him, “non-negotiable”.
Across the border, Ukraine’s parliament on Wednesday approved a declaration of a state of emergency valid for the entire country, except for the two regions in the east, where such a measure has been in place since 2014.
In this situation, the government can impose restrictions on travel, distribution of information, and what is reported in the media, in addition to introducing citizen document checking. President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed introducing the state of emergency earlier, in the face of a possible large-scale Russian military offensive.
In the evening, in a 10-minute speech carried by the Telegram app, he said that “Russia has approved an offensive against Ukraine” and accused President Vladimir Putin of not responding to his requests for meetings. “The answer was silence,” he said in an emotional tone, speaking in Russian.
According to Zelensky, his country is surrounded by up to 200,000 Moscow troops, and what he is looking for is not conflict. “The Ukrainian people want peace. The Ukrainian government wants peace and is doing everything it can to achieve it,” he said.
