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Russo-Ukraine War - 17 February 2022

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A Russian military pontoon bridge 8km from Belarus border with Ukraine was constructed & then deconstructed by troops on a range of occasions over recent days, a western official said. "This activity is highly unusual & inconsistent with any past exercise we have seen". Heavy fighting is still ongoing in Eastern Ukraine tonight according to reports from people living in the region. This has been some of the heaviest fighting in a long time. The Ukrainian MoD reported more ceasefire violations today than they did for all of January. British sources said nearly half of Russian forces massed near Ukraine were now within 30 miles (50 km) of the border. President Joe Biden warned that Russia could still invade Ukraine within days: “Our information indicates clearly that [Russian] forces…are preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days. Every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine … My sense is it will happen in the next several days”

Moscow conveyed to US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan the reaction to the US response on security guarantees, the Foreign Ministry said. "We state that the American side did not give a constructive response to the basic elements of the draft treaty with the United States prepared by the Russian side on security guarantees," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Russia insisted on the withdrawal of all American forces and weapons from Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, according to a reaction published 17 February 2022 by the Russian Foreign Ministry to the response to the US on security guarantees. "We insist on the withdrawal of all US armed forces and weapons deployed in CEE, SEE and the Baltic states . We are convinced that national potentials in these zones are quite sufficient. We are ready to discuss this topic on the basis of Articles 4 and 5 of the Russian draft treaty," the text said.

The Foreign Ministry noted that Russian obligations under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum had nothing to do with the intra-Ukrainian conflict, and also recalled that the loss of territorial integrity by the state occurred as a result of internal processes. "In the absence of the readiness of the American side to agree on firm, legally binding guarantees to ensure our security from the United States and its allies, Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of measures of a military-technical nature," the text stated.

Spreading false information and creating a tense atmosphere won't help solve the Ukraine crisis, while advocating for group confrontation and wielding the sanctions stick will only add obstacles to dialogue and negotiation, China's Foreign Ministry commented on the US' hyping of a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova commented on the Western countries' disinformation about Ukraine at a news briefing on Wednesday that she had not "seen such a number of fakes, misinformation, stuffing, slander and lies in a consolidated form for a long time," adding that the volume of Western media misinformation around Ukraine has exceeded the number of fakes on the situation in Syria.