AFP, Kiev :
EU leaders meet Wednesday to decide on new sanctions against Russia and pro-Moscow separatists in east Ukraine as Kiev raises fears of an imminent invasion by thousands of Russian troops.
A diplomatic source told AFP Tuesday that it was “looking very possible” that the European Union at its summit in Brussels would agree to a new round of sanctions and denied the move was due to pressure from Washington.
But the United States has signalled it could go it alone won toughening sanctions against Russia with a raft of unilateral measures that have been prepared which could cause new blows to Russia’s economy.
Kiev has called on the West to impose new sanctions as it sharply raised the stakes in the explosive crisis by declaring that a Ukrainian transport plane downed Monday in the eastern conflict zone had been hit by a rocket fired from the Russian side of the frontier between the two ex-Soviet states.
Russia has broken with its traditional denials of all links to the uprising by not publicly responding to the charge.
A top Ukrainian general went a step further by telling a live television audience in Kiev that he feared a Russian invasion was imminent.
“Ukraine, like never before, stands on the cusp of a wide-scale aggression from our current northern border,” said National Security and Defence Council Deputy Secretary Mykhaylo Koval.
The former defence minister said the Kremlin had parked 22,000 troops in the annexed Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and had other units stretching from the north-central region of Chernigiv to the southeastern edge of the Russian-Ukrainian border on the Sea of Azov.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s office said Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin also presented “photo and video evidence” of Russia covertly supplying the fighters with weapons and armoured vehicles.
President Vladimir Putin rejects accusations of orchestrating the uprising in reprisal for the February ouster of a Russian- backed leader and Kiev’s subsequent signature of a historic EU deal instead of a new Kremlin pact.
Fears of Russia’s direct intervention and the soaring civilian toll — 23 more people were reported killed overnight- has intensified pressure on Western allies to quickly address their worst standoff with Russia since the Cold War.
Germany and France have been spearheading EU efforts to revive a Ukrainian truce that could save the bloc from having to introduce sweeping economic sanctions against energy-rich Russia to which Putin has already vowed to respond.
