Paris: Foreign Minister of France ‘Jean-Yves Le Drian’ on Tuesday said that if Moscow recognised two Russian-backed breakaway regions in the eastern region of Ukraine as independent, it would be an “attack without weapons.”
On Tuesday, Russia’s lower house of parliament voted earlier to ask President Vladimir Putin to recognise the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, where separatist forces are known as the Donbass have been fighting the Ukrainian army since 2014.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said a parliamentary hearing that, “If this were applied, then it would be an impossible situation and would be a sort of attack without weapons. It would be in violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”
France, alongside Germany, Russia and Ukraine, form the so-called Normandy group, which was created to end the conflict in the eastern region of Ukraine.
The conflict is part of a wider crisis, with the United States warning that Russia may attack Ukraine at any time with a force of more than 100,000 troops massed near its borders. Russia denies any such plan and accuses the West of hysteria.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday some of its troops were returning to base after exercises near Ukraine, and it mocked Western warnings about a looming invasion, but NATO and the United States said they had yet to see any evidence of de-escalation that could avoid the war.
