ANTALYA, March 10. /TASS/. Weapons supplied by the West to Ukraine may later spread over the whole territory of Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.
"It is still a question that we ask our foreign colleagues with the European Union where thousands of MANPADS [man-portable air defense systems] will end up and be controlled," Lavrov said following his talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba.
"They may serve for many years as a threat to civil aviation and certainly not only in the Ukrainian airspace as it can spread over the whole territory of Europe," he continued.
Lavrov said that besides the deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, the country is also inflated with mercenaries.
"Those who pump up Ukraine with weapons must also understand that they are responsible for their actions, just like the rest of countries in favor of sending mercenaries to Ukraine to fight in the spirit of traditions, which ultra-radicals and other military battalions installed in a daily-life of Ukrainians," Lavrov said.
The Turkish city of Antalya hosted on Thursday a diplomatic forum on the Ukrainian conflict settlement and it included negotiations between Foreign Minister Kuleba and his Russian counterpart Lavrov. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu attended the forum, which lasted for about 90 minutes.
Tensions escalated along the line of contact in eastern Ukraine on the morning of February 17. The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR, LPR) reported the heaviest shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in months. On February 18, the heads of the LPR and DPR, Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin, announced the evacuation of the republics’ residents to Russia. A general mobilization was ordered in the Donbass republics on February 19.
On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees at the ceremony in the Kremlin on recognizing the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Putin met with DPR and LPR (the Lugansk People’s Republic) leaders, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, and signed with them the treaties on friendship, cooperation and mutual aid between Russia and both republics.
Russian President Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories.
The Russian Defense Ministry reassured earlier that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, but are limited to surgically striking and incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure. There are no threats whatsoever to the civilian population.