Ukraine will impose martial law if the situation in eastern Ukraine deteriorates and tensions with Russian Federation over Crimea escalate, President Petro Poroshenko said during a visit to the Lviv region on August 18. Russian Federation has accused Ukraine of being behind alleged attacks on its soldiers in Crimea, with Ukraine rejecting the allegations and holding Russian Federation responsible for a fresh wave of attacks against its forces.
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Noting that government forces have experienced a “record number” of attacks on their positions in eastern Ukraine last night, Poroshenko said there is a risk that the conflict in the restive region may escalate further. “We don’t rule out a full-scale Russian invasion”. “They would be Russia’s first line of assistance if the pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine needed help”, Anton Lavrov, a defence analyst at Moscow-based think tank CAST, told the Wall Street Journal.
Military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said insurgent strikes had doubled from the previous day as tensions between Kiev and Moscow soar over Kremlin charges that Ukraine plotted to make armed incursions into Russian-annexed Crimea this month. The European Union’s President Donald Tusk said Wednesday that Putin’s version of recent events in Crimea was not “credible.” . July was the deadliest month since last August in the conflict, which the United Nations estimates has killed at least 9,500 people since 2014.
It was not clear whether martial law, if declared, would be limited to some parts or the whole of the country.
“In case the situation in the east and in Crimea flares up, we will have to introduce martial law and declare a mobilization”, Poroshenko said in comments carried by the Interfax news agency.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko addresses servicemen of the 16th separate army aviation brigade and relatives of pilots, who were killed in the fighting in eastern Ukraine, in the city of Brody, Ukraine, Aug. 18, 2016.
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Rebels fired more than 800 artillery and mortar rounds at government positions during the past 24 hours, the most since last August, Motuzyanyk said.
