‘Putin wants to destroy Ukraine’

KIEV: Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Saturday accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of wanting to wipe out Ukraine as an independent country despite a truce deal.
Putin aimed to destroy Ukraine as an independent country ... and only NATO could defend the ex-Soviet republic from external aggression, he said.
“His aim is not just to take Donetsk and Lugansk,” Yatsenyuk said at a conference in Kiev, referring to the separatist regions in eastern Ukraine where fighting has been raging for five months.
“His goal is to take the entire Ukraine... he wants to eliminate Ukraine as an independent country,” Yatsenyuk said in English.
Kiev and its Western backers accuse Moscow of sending troops and tanks into eastern Ukraine in support of pro-Russian separatists battling Ukrainian forces in a conflict that has killed more than 3,000 people. Russia denies the accusations.
A fragile cease-fire negotiated by envoys from Ukraine, Russia, the separatists and Europe’s OSCE security watchdog, has been in place in eastern Ukraine for more than a week and is broadly holding despite sporadic violations.
“We are still in a stage of war and the key aggressor is the Russian Federation ... Putin wants another frozen conflict (in eastern Ukraine),” Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk told a conference attended by European and Ukrainian lawmakers and business leaders.
Yatseniuk said Putin would not be content only with Crimea - annexed by Moscow in March - and with Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking eastern region.
“His goal is to take all of Ukraine ... Russia is a threat to the global order and to the security of the whole of Europe,” said Yatseniuk, who is known for his hawkish rhetoric.
Asked about future NATO membership, a red line for Russia, Yatseniuk said he realised the alliance was not ready now to admit Kiev, but added: “NATO in these particular circumstances is the only vehicle to protect Ukraine.”
There is no prospect of the Atlantic alliance admitting Ukraine, a sprawling country of 45 million people between central Europe and Russia, but Kiev has stepped up cooperation with NATO in a range of areas and has pressed member states to sell it weapons to help defeat the separatists.
Yatseniuk also praised a new wave of economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the European Union and the United States and said they posed a major threat to the Russian economy.
“It is bluff (by Russia) to say it does not care about the sanctions,” he said, noting that Russia relied heavily on its energy sector and some of the sanctions target its oil firms.
Western powers imposed new sanctions on Friday, tightening financial measures against Moscow in a move Putin called “a bit strange” in view of the ceasefire.
Yatseniuk defended his government’s efforts, despite the conflict, to tackle rampant corruption and overhaul the creaking economy, adding: “It is very hard to attract investors when you have Russian tanks and artillery in your country.”