US lethal arms supplies to Ukraine will disrupt Minsk agreements — Russian lawmaker

The supplies of lethal weapons from the United States to Ukraine would disrupt the Minsk agreements, and Kiev and Washington will bear the responsibility, Russia’s State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin said on Wednesday.
"If the supplies of lethal arms to Ukraine from the US begin, of course, this may lead to a disruption of the Minsk agreements, and then the official Kiev and the official Washington will be responsible for that," the Russian lawmaker told journalists.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Ukrainian leader’s press service reported that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had a telephone conversation with US Vice-President Joe Biden.
"President Poroshenko noted the need for immediate actions for halting the escalation and disruption of the Minsk agreements. He also called on the US to implement its earlier statements on providing Ukraine with additional means to increase its defense capacity," the statement said.
In his turn, Biden assured Ukraine’s president of Washington’s support for Ukraine and agreed with him on a continuous coordination between Ukraine, the US, Germany, France and also as part of the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said Russia has information that Ukraine is already receiving weapons from abroad. Putin said he is certain the arms supplies will only make the number of victims of the conflict in eastern Ukraine grow, though the result will remain the same. "The overwhelming majority of Ukraine’s troops don’t want to take part in the fratricidal war, far away from their own homes, but the Donbas militias are determined to defend their families," he said.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry on Tuesday announced it had presented a list of required military hardware to the United States.
Last week a group of Republican senators presented to the US congress a bill empowering the president to supply armaments to the government of Ukraine. The document was registered in the electronic data base of the US Congress.
The Ukrainian parliament’s first deputy speaker, Andrey Parubiy, said he was going to the United States later this week to negotiate supplies of modern military hardware to Ukraine.
Earlier media publications said the US government is considering sending Javelin anti-tank missiles, small arms and munitions to Ukraine.