Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Publicly, ambassadors reassure that they are not leaving, so as not to hand the Kremlin a propaganda victory.
Western countries are drawing up contingency plans in case diplomatic missions have to leave Kyiv: they could be moved to Lviv or eastern Poland. Talks about such a scenario have been ongoing because of intensified Russian strikes on the capital, and it could be implemented if Russia begins deliberately targeting foreign missions. Two senior Western diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Guardian this.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine said it is not aware of any such intentions by partners. “As of now, at the MFA we have not received any such requests or notifications from foreign diplomatic missions about plans to relocate anywhere,” said MFA spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi.
According to The Guardian, Western diplomats publicly emphasize that they remain in Kyiv. Leaving would be a propaganda victory for Moscow and would create the impression that Ukraine is being abandoned. One senior Western diplomat in Kyiv assessed the Kremlin’s plan this way: “Russia plans to freeze Kyiv out, push it back into the Stone Age.” “The situation is clearly deteriorating rapidly,” the source told the paper.
“The capital is in a very dramatic situation. And it is no longer possible to pretend that we can live now as we did in peacetime,” Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Friday. In his words, the enemy is tearing the city to pieces.
Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal showed European colleagues an intercepted Russian plan of strikes on the energy sector. It envisages using missiles, drones, and bombs on substations, hydro- and thermal power plants, and boiler houses to leave Ukrainian cities without electricity and heat, including to 1000.
The security of embassies already arose in the spring. At the end of May, after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov urged Americans to evacuate the embassy from Kyiv, European foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas stated that the U.S. embassy had left Kyiv. The Ukrainian MFA then denied this, and the embassy itself reported that it was operating as usual.
On how a city can live when air-raid alerts become routine and who is responsible for this, the ZN.UA article “Alerts Non-Stop. How Cities Live in the New Realities of War” is by Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, lawyer, and director of the analytical research center Institute of the City, Oleksandr Serhiienko.
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