Defence Minister Peter Dutton has revealed there are no plans to send Australian troops into an imminent war in Ukraine.
Mr Dutton gave an ominous warning about a looming Russian invasion on Friday, saying he believes the world is “on the cusp now of an all-out conflict”.
Despite Moscow denying it is planning to invade Ukraine, US and NATO intelligence suggests Russia is ramping up its presence on the border and preparing to attack.
Mr Dutton said Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the process of “executing the final stages of his plan” to invade.
“I think it’s tragic, and we’ll see terrible scenes unfolding and it’s obvious that Ukraine’s been under cyber attack for some time,” Mr Dutton told the Nine Network.
“The Russians have amassed ships in the Black Sea, got troops coming in from different directions and you would expect that President Putin, who obviously can’t be taken at his word, is manufacturing some sort of trigger.”
When asked if he thought it was a “fait accompli”, Mr Dutton said every sign indicates “that that’s the case”.
“I mean, you can hope for an 11th-hour miracle. There are lots of European leaders who have tried to avert this but it seems President Putin is pretty intent on his action and direction,” Mr Dutton said.
“That really is going to result in the loss of life, the loss of innocent life and we’ve seen it before in Eastern Europe. We don’t want it repeated but we live in a very uncertain world.”
But despite the all but inevitability of escalation, Mr Dutton ruled out sending Australian troops.
“We work closely with the US and the UK and our partners … but if you look at Australia’s involvement, it’s a long xjmtzywway away,” Mr Dutton said.
“We haven’t been asked for troops, so we have no intention of sending troops. This is an issue NATO and Europe needs to deal with and those European leaders really. need to step up and put even more pressure on to Russia to stop them.”
Mr Dutton’s ominous warning comes in the wake of US President Joe Biden saying intelligence suggested Russia was “engaged in a false flag operation to have an excuse to go in”.
“Every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine and attack Ukraine,” Mr Biden said.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Russia’s false flag operations, including the shelling of a Ukrainian kindergarten, was designed to discredit the Ukrainians.
“The picture is continuing to be very grim,” Mr Johnson said.
“We fear very much that that is a thing we will see more of over the next few days.”
