Field developments in eastern Ukraine escalated with Kiev and its Western allies' assurances of Russia's intention to invade its western neighbor within days, despite warnings, while the crisis occupied the lion's share of the Munich Security Conference, which is expected to conclude on Sunday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to resolve its position on including his country in the alliance, and said that the West would protect its security by supporting Ukraine militarily.

Zelensky added - in a speech to the Munich Security Conference on Saturday - that the accusations of Ukrainian missile attacks on Russian regions are absurd and baseless, and he also expressed his willingness to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

In turn, US Vice President Kamala Harris affirmed that she presented clear proposals for dialogue on the Ukrainian crisis, and said that confronting the Russian escalation will not be limited to economic sanctions when an invasion of Ukraine occurs.


Speaking at the Munich Conference, Harris indicated that NATO will strengthen the eastern front of Europe militarily, and said that these reinforcements will not be for the war inside Ukraine, but for the defense of the eastern borders of NATO countries.

Kiev is awaiting with the conclusion of the Munich Conference - the largest event in the world related to security policy - a strong common position regarding the continuing Russian threat to invade the country, following the speech of the Ukrainian president and the meetings he held on the sidelines of the conference and his demand to take decisive positions to support his country.

Biden meeting

For its part, the White House announced that US President Joe Biden will hold a meeting of the National Security Council on Sunday to discuss the situation in Ukraine, noting that he was briefed on the content of his Vice President Kamala Harris's talks with US allies at the Munich Security Conference.

The White House said - in a statement - that the US national security team reiterated that Russia could launch an attack on Ukraine "at any time," and added that President Joe Biden continues to follow developments in the situation in Ukraine and regularly receives briefings from his national security team.

And Biden had stated - the day before Friday - that he was convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had taken the decision to invade Ukraine, and that Russian forces intend to start the attack in the coming days.

Biden has repeatedly stressed that his Russian counterpart has taken a decision to invade Ukraine, despite Putin's denial of his intention to launch such an attack (European)

In a related context, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken confirmed, in a newspaper interview, that he is convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made his decision to go ahead with the invasion of Ukraine.

He added, "Until that happens, the American side will spare no effort in diplomatic endeavors and trying to influence Putin's thinking," as he put it.

Blinken indicated that Washington's diplomatic efforts are fully coordinated, as are the steps to confront what he called Russian aggression.

He noted that he is looking forward to meeting his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on the 24th of this month, if Russia does not invade Ukraine during this time.

Blinken said the war would have serious and devastating consequences for innocent Ukrainians and for Russia as well.

The US Secretary of State also announced the consensus of the Group of Seven on the size and extent of the consequences that would be imposed on Russia if it invaded Ukraine.

Blinken added that Washington stands with Kiev against what he described as the hostile rhetoric of Russia and the unjustified military build-up on Ukraine's borders.

field escalation

On the ground, Al-Jazeera correspondent in Donetsk in the Donbass region (eastern Ukraine) reported hearing an explosion in the Kievsky district, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists in the north of the city, followed by heavy machine gun fire near the city's airport, which is located on the line of contact separating them from the Ukrainian army.

Reuters news agency said huge explosions were also heard in the city center.


The agency quoted a diplomatic source as saying that observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe recorded, on Saturday, about two thousand violations of the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, which is the largest number recorded since the beginning of the year.

In the past hours, the Donbass region witnessed an exchange of shelling, which was described as the most violent since the ceasefire at the end of 2014.

The Ukrainian authorities had said that two Ukrainian soldiers were killed as a result of the shelling of pro-Russian separatists in areas in the Donbass region.

Fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists has erupted in the region since 2014, killing more than 14,000 people.

A fragile ceasefire was reached nearly seven years ago, but the two sides regularly accuse each other of abuses.

hypothetical plan

On the other hand, the separatists said that they had seen the Ukrainian army's plan to restore their areas of control within two days.

On Saturday, separatist leaders announced a general military mobilization and ordered the evacuation of women and children to Russia because of what they said was the possibility of an imminent attack by Ukrainian forces.

Kiev categorically denied this accusation, and said - along with Western leaders - that the mobilization, evacuation and escalation of bombing along the ceasefire line in the past days are part of Russia's plan to create a pretext for the invasion of Ukraine.

And the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven countries said when they met on Saturday, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, that they saw no evidence that Russia was reducing its military activity near the borders of Ukraine.

Russian maneuvers

Meanwhile, Russia conducted maneuvers of the Strategic Nuclear Missile Forces, followed by President Vladimir Putin from Moscow with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.

The exercises included launching ICBMs, simulating a nuclear attack, and extensive military exercises with Belarus.


This comes at a time when Moscow announced the start of an investigation into the fall of two shells inside its territory, without talking about injuries.

It is expected that the joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises "The Resilience of the Union 2022", which began 10 days ago, will conclude on Sunday.

The maneuvers that took place on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border simulate fighting battles against an attack by an imaginary enemy, in which units of special forces and landing forces participate, and for the first time, units of the Russian forces of the Eastern Military District are participating in these maneuvers.

Both Moscow and Minsk had announced that the Russian forces participating in the "Union resolve" would withdraw after the end of the joint maneuvers, a matter that will be pursued by the West, which questioned Russia's announcement a few days ago to withdraw some of its forces that are conducting military exercises.

Washington and its allies assert that Russia has deployed about 130,000 troops around Ukraine and in Belarus, in preparation for attacking its western neighbor, which Moscow has repeatedly denied.