Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Thursday a military operation in Ukraine to defend the separatists in the east of the country.
“I have made the decision for a military operation,” he said, sitting at a dark wooden desk, in a surprise statement on television shortly before 4 a.m. “We will strive to achieve demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,” said the Kremlin master, promising to bring “to court those who have committed numerous crimes, responsible for the bloodshed of civilians, especially Russian citizens.
“We do not have in our plans an occupation of Ukrainian territories, we do not intend to impose anything by force on anyone”, he assured, calling on the Ukrainian soldiers “to lay down their arms”.
Then he addressed those “who would try to interfere with us (…) they must know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead to consequences that you have never experienced before”.
Emmanuel Macron “strongly condemned Russia’s decision” and considered that “Russia must immediately end its military operations”. For her part, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised to hold the Kremlin “responsible” for the “unjustified” attack on Ukraine.
A few hours earlier, the Kremlin had announced that the leaders of the pro-Russian separatist “republics” in eastern Ukraine had asked for Vladimir Putin’s “help” to “repel Ukrainian aggression”.
Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said his country was targeting “the ruling junta in Kyiv”. “We are not aggressive towards the Ukrainian people, but towards the ruling junta in Kiev,” he said at the end of his speech before the United Nations Security Council.
Poland considers itself directly threatened and calls for the activation of Article 4 of the NATO treaty
The Polish government announced on Thursday that it had asked NATO to activate article 4 of the Alliance treaty. Poland, on the border with Ukraine, thus means that it is directly threatened by the conflict.
Article 4 provides that the members “shall consult each other whenever (…) the territorial integrity, political independence or security of one of the parties is threatened. »
This tends to involve NATO more, which could consider itself less concerned by the conflict in Ukraine, this country not being a member of the Atlantic Alliance. And after Article 4 comes Article 5 of the Treaty, the most binding, which lays down the obligation of military solidarity between the Member States: “the parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them occurring in Europe or North America will be considered an attack directed against all parties”.