(MENAFN- The Peninsula) President Petro Poroshenko warned yesterday that Ukraine must be ready to defend itself should a peace plan aimed at ending a five-month war with pro-Russian insurgents fall through.
The pro-Western leader's comments followed a warning by a top defence spokesman that Ukraine would not pull back its forces from the front line as required under a new truce until all sides put down their guns.
Poroshenko delivered an 80-minute televised defence of his high-stakes decision Tuesday to hand a wedge of the industrial east three years of effective autonomy in return for the rebel-held area remaining a part of Ukraine. A September 5 ceasefire was reinforced on Saturday in a European-mediated deal signed with separatist leaders and Russia that required all sides to halt fire within 24 hours and set up a 30-kilometre demilitarisation zone. Poroshenko had been accused of essentially admitting defeat to the Kremlin by nationalist politicians who are jostling for votes ahead of parliamentary polls at the end of next month.
And the 48-year-old chocolate baron came out swinging in his first extended question-and-answer session with reporters since the day after his May presidential election win.
"We must be ready to protect our country if the peace plan does not work," he said.
"Believe me, we have the means to defend ourselves," he added in reference to supplies of radar and other non-lethal military equipment he secured during his visit to Washington on Thursday and talks with NATO allies.
Poroshenko conceded that the advanced technology was especially badly needed because 65 percent of the military hardware - much of it left over from the Soviet era - sent into the war zone had been destroyed.
National Defence and Security Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said however that Ukraine would not withdraw its forces to allow the creation of a buffer zone until the rebels stopped shooting.
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