Foreign arms deliveries to Kiev will not promote a peaceful settlement of the Donbas crisis and instead may escalate tensions, Andrei Marochko, the spokesman for the People's Militia of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), said on Thursday

LUHANSK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th January, 2019) Foreign arms deliveries to Kiev will not promote a peaceful settlement of the Donbas crisis and instead may escalate tensions, Andrei Marochko, the spokesman for the People's Militia of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), said on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada Andriy Shevchenko said that the first batch of Canadian sniper rifles was expected to be sent to Ukraine this year.

"First of all, sales of arms by Western countries to Ukraine do not contribute to the concept of a peaceful settlement," Marochko said at a briefing, underlining that supplying weapons to the Ukrainian army would lead to an escalation of the Donbas conflict.

In 2018, Ukraine received more than $40 million in lethal weapons and other military assets from the United States, Lithuania, the United Kingdom and Canada.

according to the Ukrainian Armed Forces' General Staff.

Russia has repeatedly warned Western states against supplying arms to Ukraine, saying that this would only escalate the Donbas conflict and hinder the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

Many European politicians have also expressed opposition to supplying arms to Ukraine. Former Chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and incumbent German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said that giving Ukraine weapons was a very risky and counterproductive way of resolving the crisis.