Ukraine latest: Separatists call full mobilization

Kyiv, Feb 19: The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic leader, Denis Pushilin, announced an order on general mobilization on Saturday.

"I urge fellow countrymen who are in the reserve to come to the military commissariats. Today I have signed a decree on general mobilization," Pushilin said in a video message.

On Friday, Donetsk and the other self-proclaimed region, Luhansk started to evacuate their breakaway region's residents to Russia.

Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian rebels reported increased shelling in the east over the last few days.

Washington and other Western allies say it could form part of a Russian pretext to invade Ukraine.

"There is simply no evidence to these assertions and it defies basic logic to believe the Ukrainians would choose this moment, with well over 150,000 [Russian] troops arrayed on its borders, to escalate a yearslong conflict,"US President Joe Biden said on Friday.

Russia has repeatedly denied that it has no plans to attack its neighbor.

Russia rejected claims it was responsible for cyber-attack on Ukraine

On Saturday, Russia denied allegations that it was responsible for cyber-attacks on dozens of official Ukrainian websites.

The US, UK, and Ukraine blamed Moscow of being behind the spate of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that briefly knocked out banking and government websites.

"We categorically reject these baseless statements of the administration and note that Russia has nothing to do with the mentioned events and in principle has never conducted and does not conduct any 'malicious' operations in cyberspace," the Russian embassy in the US wrote on Twitter.

Harris to push Western unity

US Vice President Kamala Harris was expected to warn Moscow on Saturday that an invasion of Ukraine could likely lead to an even bigger NATO footprint on Russia's doorsteps.

She would use her speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany to push for "strength through unity," a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the Associated Press.

She already touched on the theme on Friday when she declared "our greatest strength is our unity'' as she met with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on the sidelines of the conference.

The Baltic countries have requested the US to increase its troop presence.

Source: DW