US ‘sowing chaos in the world’
Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday accused Washington of seeking to prolong the conflict in Ukraine and of fuelling conflicts elsewhere in the world, including with the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.
Hours after his speech at the opening ceremony of a security conference in Moscow, explosions rocked a Russian military facility on the Kremlin-controlled peninsula of Crimea.
Meanwhile, the first UN-chartered vessel laden with grain meanwhile left Ukraine for Africa following a hallmark deal brokered by Turkey and the UN to relieve a global food crisis.
"The situation in Ukraine shows that the US is trying to prolong this conflict. And they act in exactly the same way, fuelling the potential for conflict in Asia, Africa and Latin America," Putin said in televised remarks.
"The American adventure in relation to Taiwan is not just a trip of an individual irresponsible politician, but part of a purposeful, conscious US strategy to destabilise and make chaotic the situation in the region and the world," he added.
"We see this as a carefully planned provocation," Putin said.
He cited the AUKUS security pact between Australia, Britain and the United States as evidence of Western attempts to build a Nato-style bloc in the Asia-Pacific region.
Lashing out at the United States for supplying weapons to Kyiv, he said Washington is "using the people of Ukraine as cannon fodder."
The United States has provided key economic and military backing to Kyiv, in particular supplying Ukraine with long-range, precision artillery that has allowed it to strike Russian supply facilities deep inside Moscow-controlled territory.
According to Russian officials and news agencies, the blasts in Crimea engulfed an ammunition depot at a Russian military base in the north of the peninsula, disrupting trains and forcing 2,000 people to be evacuated from a nearby village.
Moscow denounced sabotage and Ukraine hinted at responsibility for the new explosions.
Plumes of smoke were later seen at a second Russian military base in central Crimea, Russia's Kommersant newspaper said, while blasts hit another facility in the west last week.
The explosions raised the prospect of new dynamics in the six-month war if Ukraine now has capability to strike deeper into Russian territory or pro-Kyiv groups are having success with guerrilla-style attacks.
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