Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to impose sanctions rapidly on Russia as tens of thousands of the Kremlin’s troops remain deployed on his country’s borders and shelling intensified along parts of his country occupied for eight years by armed insurgents beholden to Moscow.

In an impassioned plea to the annual Munich security conference attended by senior Western officials, Zelensky also sought clarity on the prospects of his ex-Soviet state joining NATO and the European Union. And he chided Western officials for repeatedly predicting that a Russian incursion into Ukraine would be launched on a specific date.

Some Western leaders have in the past week warned of an imminent Russian invasion, with U.S. President Joe Biden saying he was “convinced” this would occur within days and Secretary of State Antony Blinken predicting a quick Russian advance aimed at capturing the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

As Zelensky spoke, the cease-fire in place in occupied parts of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region was shattered many times over. The Russian proxies who have run two unrecognised statelets in Donbas since 2014 urged a mass evacuation of residents to Russia, prompting Western countries to issue new warnings against any military action or miscalculation that could serve as a pretext for a Russian incursion.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made fresh accusations that Ukraine was failing to implement two agreements aimed at ending the Donbas fighting – accords now criticised as unworkable by many in Ukraine. Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin and his ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, witnessed mass-scale military exercises defined by top officers as “purely defensive”.

Russia has repeatedly denied it has any intention of invading Ukraine eight years after annexing the Crimean peninsula and fomenting the conflict in eastern Ukraine. But Moscow also says NATO and the United States have ignored its calls for security guarantees, including an undertaking that the Atlantic alliance will expand no further and Ukraine will never be allowed to join.

“You’re telling me that it’s 100% that the war will start in a couple of days. Then what (are you) waiting for?” Zelensky said. “We don’t need your sanctions after the bombardment will happen, and after our country will be fired at or after we will have no borders or after we will have no economy or parts of our country will be occupied. Why would we need those sanctions then?”

Ukraine, he said, had been duped by a 1994 agreement to giving up its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees that its borders would be intact. It needed guarantees now and assurances on its prospects of joining key Western organisations.

Zelensky seeks answers on NATO, EU

“We are told the doors are open,” Zelensky said, referring to NATO’s ‘open door’ policy of offering membership to all. “But so far, outsiders are not allowed. If not all members are willing to see us, or all members do not want to see us there, be honest about it. Open doors are good, but we need open answers.”

Ukraine, he told the gathering, had lost territory larger in terms of square area than Switzerland, the Netherlands or Belgium.

“We will protect our country, with or without support,” Zelensky said.

And he issued yet another appeal for talks with Putin, repeatedly rejected by a Kremlin far more focused on talking to Washington.

“I don’t know what Russia’s president wants, that’s why I want to meet,” he said.

Other participants at the security meeting repeated pledges that Russia would face tough punitive measures if it launched the incursion. U.S. estimates have put the number of Russian soldiers on the border at anywhere up to 190,000.

U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris said Washington and its allies would target not only financial institutions and technology exports to Russia, but also “those who are complicit and those who aid and direct this unprovoked invasion”.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the conference he still hoped diplomacy could provide a solution and avoid an incursion that would “echo around the world”. He called for unity of purpose among Western nations.

“Every time that Western ministers have visited Kyiv, we have assured the people of Ukraine and their leaders that we stand foursquare behind their sovereignty and independence.

“How hollow, how meaningless, how insulting those words would seem, if at the very moment when their sovereignty and independence is imperilled, we simply look away.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg echoed U.S. fears of an imminent invasion.

“Every indication indicates that Russia is planning a full-fledged attack against Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told German broadcaster ARD. “We all agree that the risk of an attack is very high.”

Diplomatic initiatives

European ministers and other officials feverishly pursued diplomatic initiatives throughout the past two weeks – German Chancellor Olaf Sholz visited both Zelensky and Putin this past week as French President Emmanuel Macron had done a week earlier. Zelensky spoke again to Macron after his Munich address, saying in a tweet that the two had “discussed the need and possible ways of immediate de-escalation and political-diplomatic settlement”.

The White House said Biden, who has spoken to Putin has spoken three times in the past two months, would convene a meeting of the National Security Council on Sunday.

In areas of eastern Ukraine run by Russian proxies since 2014, authorities ordered a mobilisation of local men and mass evacuations to Russia and several busloads of mainly elderly residents and women were taken over the border to Russia. Authorities in Moscow set up camps for the displaced and Putin ordered an allocation of the equivalent of $130 to each displaced person. The separatists – and Russia – accuse Ukraine of massing its forces in order to recapture those areas by force.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) noted some 1,500 violations of a longstanding cease-fire in and around the occupied regions – part of a sharp rise in recent days.  One shell on Thursday landed in a school on the Ukrainian side of the line separating the two sides, blowing a hole in a wall and injuring three adults but no children.

Ukraine on Saturday reported two of its servicemen killed in the upsurge in military activity.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, quoted by Russian news agencies, told his French opposite number, Jean-Yves Le Drian, by telephone that lack of progress in diplomatic efforts was linked to Ukraine’s reluctance to do more to implement the 2014 and 2015 Minsk accords. Macron has been the most prominent Western leader to call for greater efforts to implement the accords.

Under those agreements, Ukraine is to re-establish control over its borders while offering autonomy to areas now held by separatists and holding elections – but interpretation of the agreements varies widely and many in Ukraine say the agreements would give Russia too big a say in their country’s affairs.