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Possible weapon supplies to Ukraine contradict EU code — Russian foreign ministry

The European Code of Conduct on Arms Export Control bans supplying weapons to Ukraine as these weapons will be used against peaceful population, the ministry said

MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/. The authors of a statement on supplying arms to Ukraine should realise they will be used against peaceful civilians, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday in a commentary.

"In the past week, Polish politicians, even the high-ranking ones, announced their readiness to provide Ukraine with weapons and claimed that there existed neither obstacles nor restrictions for this," the ministry said.

"Such statements were heard from President Bronislaw Komorowski, Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna and Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak while Poland’s Ambassador to Russia Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz was the most outspoken."

"Speculations whether it is worthy to supply Polish weaponry to Ukraine horrify with their cynicism," the diplomats said. "Their authors should realise that it will be used indiscriminately, or in other words against peaceful population as well."

The European Code of Conduct on Arms Export Control bans supplying weapons to Ukraine as these weapons will be used against peaceful population, the ministry said specifying that in December 2008 within the framework of the European Union a decision to make the Code’s provision stipulating transition of arms be legally binding was adopted unanimously.

"It prescribes the inadmissibility of supplying weapons to conflict areas where it could be used for internal repressions and to those who was notorious for violating standards of humanitarian law," the commentary it said. "It cannot be denied that Ukraine under the rule of current Kiev authorities is subject to all these definitions."

Combat actions between the Ukrainian military and militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics during Kiev’s military operation in the country’s east conducted since mid-April 2014 have claimed over 5,300 lives and displaced nearly a million people to flee their homes seeking refuge in neighbouring countries, according to UN data.