Two foreign ministers from NATO allies in Kyiv as Russia attacks Ukraine

Liimets and Rinkevics arrived just hours before the Russian military began attacking targets across the country, as the Baltic states sought to show solidarity with Ukraine. That effort has put them near the front lines of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move to topple Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which the Kremlin chief announced just minutes before the assault began.

“This act of aggression is not acceptable,” the foreign ministers said. “It’s a blatant violation of the international law, of all international norms and a crime against Ukrainian people that we condemn.”

Putin characterized the operation as a necessary defense of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the eastern part of the country, where Russian forces have controlled a large swath of territory over the past eight years of conflict.

EUROPEAN ALLIES DECLARE RUSSIAN ATTACK ON UKRAINE THREAT TO NATO TERRITORY UNDER ARTICLE 4

“Its purpose is to protect the people who have, for eight years, been exposed to humiliation and genocide by the regime in Kyiv,” Putin said in a recorded message. “For this, we will seek demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine and also press for bringing to justice those who have committed numerous bloody crimes against peaceful civilians, including Russian citizens.”

Those allegations from Putin are widely understood to be a series of false pretexts for war. Neither Western nor international officials have observed any actions by Ukraine that would constitute a genocide, but Putin has tarred the Ukrainian government as Nazi sympathizers in the years since the removal of a pro-Russian president of Ukraine.

“How could a people that lost more than 8 million people in the fight against Nazism support Nazism?” Zelensky, a Ukrainian of Jewish descent who won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s 2019 presidential elections by campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, said in an address that aired shortly before the Russian assault began. “How could I be a Nazi?”

He derided those allegations while professing his affection for the eastern Ukrainian regions that Putin claims are in need of protection from the Ukrainian military. “Luhansk? The house where my best friend’s mother lives? The place where the father of my best friend is buried?” he said in Russian, according to a Washington Post translation.

Putin, in a lengthy essay published last year, asserted that the independence of Ukraine “is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against” Russia.

“As a result of such a harsh and artificial division of Russians and Ukrainians, the Russian people in all may decrease by hundreds of thousands or even millions,” Putin wrote in July 2021.

Putin returned to that theme Monday when he asserted that the nation of Ukraine was only allowed to form a sovereign state. His characterization of the Ukrainian government as a neo-Nazi regime is seen as a serious threat to Zelensky and his government.

“That’s scary,” a European official, speaking to the Washington Examiner on condition of anonymity, said late Wednesday, “Basically, he’s about to arrest all activists, both from government and [the] nongovernment sector that are ready to fight for Ukrainian independence. … I think Zelensky is targeted and probably most of the current politicians in Ukraine.”

Liimets and Rinkevics are in Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian officials. The European official who spoke with the Washington Examiner surmised that Russia’s current tactics would not bring them into immediate danger.

“It’s difficult to imagine the Russians would start bombing the city center,” the European official said. “I don’t see that people in the capital would be under a direct threat there. They will probably have difficulty leaving the country if the air traffic is closed.”

Ukraine, unlike the Baltic states, is not a member of NATO, but it shares a border with several NATO member states. Poland, which shares a land border with Ukraine, has opened its border to U.S. citizens who need to leave the country by land.

The foreign ministers did not reveal their exit strategy but outlined a multifaceted plan to punch Russia and support Ukrainian efforts to fend off the attack.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“All of us in the whole International community need to condemn it in [the] strongest possible way, to impose strongest possible sanctions on Russia,” the Estonian and Latvian officials said. “We would need to urgently provide Ukrainian people with weapons, ammunition, and any other kind of military support to defend itself as well as economic, financial, and political assistance and support, humanitarian aid.”