KIEV, September 9. /TASS/. The Western countries’ refusal to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine is a big mistake, Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov said on Wednesday.
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"It’s a big mistake of the West that refuses to supply to us (Ukraine) lethal weapons," Turchynov said on Ukraine’s TV Channel 24.
According to him, "There is an opinion that the supplies of lethal weapons will irritate" Russia. "I have a different view. I constantly communicate with the Western partners and I’m sure that only a strong army equipped with modern weapons can be a factor of peace and security in Europe," said the Ukrainian Security Council chief.
Meanwhile, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the violence in Ukraine’s southeast has killed 6,500 people in the past year, wounded 16,000 and left 5 million people in need of humanitarian aid. With more than 1.3 million registered IDPs, Ukraine has now the ninth largest number of internally displaced in the world, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier said Russia had information that Ukraine was receiving weapons from abroad. Putin said he was certain the arms supplies would only make the number of victims of the conflict in eastern Ukraine grow, though the result would remain the same. "The overwhelming majority of Ukraine’s troops don’t want to take part in the fratricidal war, far away from their own homes, but the Donbas militias are determined to defend their families," he said.