He also called on the Ukraine military to lay down its arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His statement came after the Kremlin said rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine had asked Moscow for military help against Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In response, Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky made an emotional late-night appeal to Russians not to support a \u201cmajor war in Europe\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking Russian, Zelensky said that the people of Russia are being lied to about Ukraine and that the possibility of war also \u201cdepends on you\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho can stop (the war)? People. These people are among you, I am sure,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zelensky said he had tried to call Putin but there was \u201cno answer, only silence\u201d<\/em>, adding that Moscow now had around 200,000 soldiers near Ukraine\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier the separatist leaders of Donetsk and Lugansk sent separate letters to Putin, asking him to \u201chelp them repel Ukraine\u2019s aggression\u201d<\/em>, Putin\u2019s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The two letters were published by Russian state media and were both dated Feb 22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their appeals came after Putin recognized their independence and signed friendship treaties with them that include defense deals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tens of thousands of Russian troops are stationed near Ukraine\u2019s borders, and the West had said for days that an attack was imminent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Moment of peril\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Putin has defied a barrage of international criticism over the crisis, with some Western leaders saying he was no longer rational.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His announcement of the military operation came ahead of a last-ditch summit involving European Union leaders in Brussels planned for Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 27-nation bloc had also imposed sanctions on Russia\u2019s defense minister Sergei Shoigu and high-ranking figures including the commanders of Russia\u2019s army, navy and air force, another part of the wave of Western punishment after Putin sought to rewrite Ukraine\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United Nations Security Council met late Wednesday for its second emergency session in three days over the crisis, with a personal plea by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Putin going unheeded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPresident Putin, stop your troops from attacking Ukraine, give peace a chance, too many people have already died,\u201d<\/em> Guterres said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned that an all-out Russian invasion could displace five million people, triggering a new European refugee crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before Putin\u2019s announcement, Ukraine had urged its approximately three million citizens living in Russia to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are united in believing that the future of European security is being decided right now, here in our home, in Ukraine,\u201d<\/em> President Zelensky said during a joint media appearance with the visiting leaders of Poland and Lithuania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Western capitals said Russia had amassed 150,000 troops in combat formations on Ukraine\u2019s borders with Russia, Belarus, and Russian-occupied Crimea and on warships in the Black Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ukraine has around 200,000 military personnel and Wednesday\u2019s call-up could see up to 250,000 reservists aged between 18 and 60 receive their mobilization papers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moscow\u2019s total forces are much larger \u2013 around a million active-duty personnel \u2013 and have been modernized and re-armed in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n High cost of war<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But Ukraine has received advanced anti-tank weapons and some drones from Nato members. More have been promised as the allies try to deter a Russian attack or at least make it costly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shelling had intensified in recent days between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists \u2013 a Ukrainian soldier was killed on Wednesday, the sixth in four days \u2013 and civilians living near the front were fearful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dmitry Maksimenko, a 27-year-old coal miner from government-held Krasnogorivka, told AFP that he was shocked when his wife came to tell him that Putin had recognized the two Russian-backed separatist enclaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe said: \u2018Have you heard the news?\u2019. How could I have known? There\u2019s no electricity, never mind internet. I don\u2019t know what is going to happen next, but to be honest, I\u2019m afraid,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a Russian village around 50km (30 miles) from the border, AFP reporters saw military equipment including rocket launchers, howitzers, and fuel tanks mounted on trains stretching for hundreds of metres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russia has long demanded that Ukraine be forbidden from ever joining the Nato alliance and that US troops pull out from Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking to journalists, Putin on Tuesday set out a number of stringent conditions if the West wanted to de-escalate the crisis, saying Ukraine should drop its Nato ambition and become neutral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Washington Wednesday announced sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which Germany had earlier effectively suspended by halting certification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Australia, Britain, Japan, and the European Union have all also announced sanctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NMT<\/a> as reported by AFP<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Moscow, Feb 24 — Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a \u201cmilitary operation\u201d in Ukraine on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1.jpg",1024,651,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1-300x191.jpg",300,191,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1-768x488.jpg",640,407,true],"large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1.jpg",640,407,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1.jpg",1024,651,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1.jpg",1024,651,false],"newsium-slider-full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1.jpg",1024,651,false],"newsium-featured":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1.jpg",1024,651,false],"newsium-medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1.jpg",720,458,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Editor"]},"category_info":"World<\/a>","tag_info":"World","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13371,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13369\/revisions\/13371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"military](\"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/323M6EV-highres-1024x651-1.jpg\")