Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg and Slovak Foreign Minister Ivan Korčok will together visit Ukraine on February 7-8 on the invitation of their Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.
The first-ever visit by the foreign ministers of the Slavkov or Austerlitz format to Kyiv is to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s press service said in a statement.
Kuleba and his Czech, Slovak and Austrian counterparts will hold talks with key agenda items such as “further support for Ukraine in countering Russian aggression, the implementation of a comprehensive containment package for the Russian Federation, strengthening security cooperation, supporting the economic and financial stability of our state,” it said.
The Slavkov format ministers are also planning to visit the zone of Ukraine’s Joint Forces Operation to familiarize themselves with the current situation, Kyiv said.
Meanwhile, the US government has again warned that Russia could invade Ukraine at any time.
“We are in the window. Any day now, Russia could take military action against Ukraine, or it could be a couple of weeks from now,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told Fox News on Sunday.
Two US officials earlier told Reuters that Russia had assembled about 70% of the necessary military capability needed for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The tensions between Russia, Ukraine and the West come nearly eight years after Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimea peninsula and backed a bloody rebellion in the eastern Donbas region.
Moscow accuses the Ukrainian government of failing to implement the Minsk agreement – an international deal to restore peace to the east, where Russian-backed rebels control swathes of territory and at least 14,000 people have been killed since 2014.
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