Washington has been fanning the flames of the conflict while nipping all peace initiatives in the bud, Anatoly Antonov has said
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov speaks at the Woodrow Wilson Institute on November 18, 2019 in Washington, DC. © Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP
The Ukraine conflict was instigated by the US and other Western countries, which means that it is up to Washington to pay for the reconstruction of the ravaged nation, Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, said on Wednesday.
Antonov was asked to comment on a statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who, speaking at a Ukraine reconstruction conference in London, claimed that “Russia will eventually bear the cost” of restoring the country.
The Russian diplomat pushed back against Blinken’s remarks, saying the conflict between Moscow and Kiev was “the result of years of deliberate efforts by the United States to create a hotbed of tensions at our borders, to turn Ukraine into ‘anti-Russia,’” which involved a Western-backed coup in the Ukrainian capital in 2014.
Antonov claimed that the US was actively fanning the hostilities by pumping Kiev with weapons, while nipping any peace initiatives in the bud. “This means that the administration is fully responsible for what is happening in Ukraine. That’s why it is up to the United States to rebuild the country,” he stated.
Read more
He went on to say that while it is possible to restore houses destroyed by American weapons, it will be much more difficult to erase the humanitarian consequences of the conflict.
“How will… Washington evaluate the lives of innocent people? How is the United States going to settle accounts with the Ukrainians, whom they are driving into reckless frontal assaults in today’s so-called counter-offensive?” the envoy asked.
While Western countries have pledged billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance to Ukraine, some of Kiev backers have also called for the seizure of Russian assets that were frozen after the start of the Ukraine conflict, to be used for reconstruction. While legal hurdles have so far prevented this from happening, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has described the initiative as “pure banditry.”
