KYIV: Ukraine yesterday vowed to keep its airspace open to international travel despite Western warnings that Russian troops conducting drills near its borders could invade at any point. The Dutch carrier KLM on Saturday became the first major airline to indefinitely suspend flights to the former Soviet republic because of the rising risks.

Meanwhile, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has compared Western diplomatic efforts to head off a Russian invasion of Ukraine to the appeasement of Nazi Germany ahead of World War II. Wallace told the Sunday Times that Russian President Vladimir Putin could send his massed troops into Ukraine "at any time" and suggested unnamed Western countries were not being tough enough with Moscow.

"It may be that he (Putin) just switches off his tanks and we all go home but there is a whiff of Munich in the air from some in the West," Wallace said. The 1938 Munich Agreement handed Nazi Germany parts of Czechoslovakia in a failed bid to head off major conflict in Europe. Western leaders have been shuttling back and forth to Moscow in the hopes of persuading Putin to stand his troops down. "The worrying thing is that despite the massive amount of increased diplomacy, that military build-up has continued. It has not paused, it has continued," Wallace said. Ukraine's ambassador to London warned that mentioning Munich was not necessarily helping the situation.

Russia carries the "responsibility" for the possibility of war in Ukraine, the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said yesterday as fears of a Russian invasion mount. There was "the danger of a military conflict, of war in eastern Europe and Russia carries the responsibility for that," Steinmeier said in a speech to mark his reelection.

Ukraine's budget airline SkyUp said yesterday that its flight from Portugal to Kyiv was forced to land in Moldova because the plane's Irish leasing company had revoked permission for it to cross into Ukraine.

SkyUP added that European leasing companies were demanding that Ukrainian airlines return their planes to EU airspace within 48 hours. Ukraine's infrastructure ministry responded by holding an emergency meeting aimed at maintaining foreign travel and keeping the country from becoming more isolated in the heat of the crisis. "The airspace over Ukraine remains open and the state is working on preempting risks for airlines," the ministry said after the meeting. Industry analysts believe other international airlines may soon also ban flights into Ukraine because of the growing cost to travel insurers.

The travel industry is still haunted by the memory of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 being shot down while flying near eastern Ukraine's conflict zone in July 2014. All 298 passengers aboard the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur flight died. Ukraine's infrastructure ministry acknowledged that "some carriers are facing difficulties linked to fluctuations on the insurance market".

"For its part, the state is prepared to support airlines and provide them with additional financial guarantees in order to support the market," it said.

Foreigners fleeing

The worries about air travel come with a growing number of Western governments winding down their diplomatic missions in Kyiv and advising citizens to get out of Ukraine as soon as they can. The US State Department on Saturday ordered all non-emergency embassy staff out of Ukraine. Russia cited fears of "possible provocations from the Kyiv regime" as it also began pulling out some embassy staff.

The drawdown has touched the staff of the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) monitoring mission in Ukraine. The OSCE has served as the world's eyes and ears for the eight-year conflict across Ukraine's Russian-backed separatist east that has claimed more than 14,000 lives.

Asked about the Munich comparison yesterday morning television, fellow British Conservative MP Brandon Lewis said the association with the Nazis was "not the point". Wallace was making "the comparison between the diplomatic attempts in the run-up to World War Two and the diplomatic attempts we're all putting in now," Lewis said on Sky News.

The defense minister Wallace tweeted later yesterday that he was cutting short a family holiday and returning home "because we are concerned about the worsening situation in Ukraine". - AFP