Minsk - Kyiv proceeds with the assumption that a unit of the Ukrainian government forces deployed near Debaltseve has not been encircled by the militants, but this confidence is unconvincing, Russian President Vladimir Putin said following the Normandy Quartet talks in Minsk on Feb. 12.
“In response to the Kyiv authorities’ aggressive actions, the militants not only withstood attacks by Kyiv’s army and security forces but also launched an offensive and encircled a significant unit numbering from 6,000 to 8,000 people,” he said.
“They [the militants] surely expect this group to lay down its arms and stop resisting. We still call on both sides to exercise restraint and do all they can so that the separation of the troops and heavy hardware should pass without excessive bloodshed,” Putin said.
“Representatives of the Ukrainian leadership believe there is no encirclement, and therefore they believe everything will pass calmly enough. I had doubts from the very start, and I am ready to share them with you. If there is such encirclement in reality, proceeding from normal logic, those who are within the encirclement will make attempts to break through it, and those outside it will make attempts to make a corridor for the encircled servicemen to leave it,” Putin said.
Putin said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and he had agreed that “we will instruct military experts to find out what is actually happening in real life” near Debaltseve, he said.
