“First of all, we have not terrorized Greece or anyone else and we are not terrorizing them,” says Maria Zakharova
Moscow’s annoyance at his statements Kyriakou Mitsotakis after what he experienced during Russian attack in Odessa, the representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed on Thursday evening Maria Zakharova.
In fact, the representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs chose to respond to the Prime Minister’s statements by invoking the great Miki Theodorakis.
“Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis: “In this dark hour for Europe, we have shown our determination to support Ukraine with a united front, something our enemies may not have expected. You will not scare us, we will continue to support Ukraine as long as necessary.”
“He also called Russia an enemy of Europe.”
“First, we have not terrorized Greece or anyone else and we are not terrorizing them. You won’t find a single example” says the Russian official in her Telegram post.
“Secondly, Europe was different. The Third Reich was also Europe. For such a Nazi Europe, we will always be enemies,” Zakharova asserted.
“Third, in my Soviet/Russian school, in the usual music lesson for every student, I studied the works of Mikis Theodorakis. I knew both his music and his fate. And he was an enemy of Europe, of Nazi Europe.”
“Don’t betray the memory of the Greek Resistance Kyriakos!” concludes Maria Zakharova.
“We were all worried, it was something very wild”
We were all worried, it was something very wild, emphasized earlier on Thursday Kyriakos Mitsotakis speaking to journalists in Bucharest about what he experienced in Odessa.
“One understands what does war mean?… We were there for seven hours. For Ukrainians it is a daily reality. And this confirms her correctness of the EU’s choice to support Ukraine against Russian aggression” pointed out Kyriakos Mitsotakis referring to missile attack by Russian forces during his visit to Odessa yesterday.
“We were all worried. When you consider that we were in an open space, without the possibility to take cover anywhere, it was a very wild thing,” he noted.
Regarding the European People’s Party, he noted: “I see the EPP united and coordinated behind her candidacy Ursula von der Leyen, and politically justified for the choices he made. We are coming with a strong political platform to the upcoming European elections. The EPP is an irreplaceable partner in the next day’s negotiations.”
“It is possible that the target of the missile was Zelensky or Mitsotakis”
“It cannot be ruled out that yesterday’s Russian attack on the port of Odessa had as target his delegations Volodymyr Zelensky or Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis”, said a top adviser to the president of Ukraine.
The two leaders were inspecting the Ukrainian grain export corridor in the port of the Black Sea when the missile hit port infrastructure, Reuters comments.
“It was actually less than 500 meters from us. What was that?… You can’t rule that out it was intended for my president’s delegation or the delegation of foreign visitors,” characteristically stated on CNN Live Ihor Zovkva, Zelensky’s top diplomatic adviser.
Both Zelensky and Mitsotakis appeared at a press conference on Wednesday to state that they witnessed the Russian strike. Five people were killed in the attack, the Ukrainian military said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that its forces attacked a hangar housing Ukrainian navy drones in the portadding that “the goal was achieved.”
The infrastructure of the Ukrainian port of the Black Sea are a constant target for Russian attackswhich have intensified since mid-July, when Moscow abandoned a UN-brokered deal allowing safe passage of Ukrainian grain and Kiev created its own export corridor.
Zovkva stated that the missile was fired from Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
“The missile took less than three minutes to reach the target, the location of the port of Odessa,” Zovkva said.
“If we had sufficient air defenses, that ballistic missile could have been intercepted”he said.
“The Russian attack on Odessa is a message from Moscow”
In the Russian attack on Odessa during his joint visit Ukrainian president and the prime minister said today’s French press highlighting yesterday’s statements by the two leaders.
The newspaper Le Monde underlines that the strikes took place after the two leaders visited the port, which is key to Ukraine’s grain exports via the Black Sea.
It is also underlined that the move of the Greek prime minister had not been officially announced, like most visits of international leaders to Ukraine, for security reasons. The newspaper mentions Russia’s claim of responsibility for the missile attack, while noting that, as the Russian Ministry of Defense reported on social media, the strike hit a “hangar in a commercial port area of ​​Odessa, in which naval drones are being prepared for combat by the Ukrainian armed forces”.
For its part, the newspaper Liberation speaks of a message from Moscow, projecting, however, the estimate of the American administration, “how it is too early” to say, “if these strikes specifically targeted the Ukrainian President and the Greek Prime Minister”.
It is also reported that the two leaders completed the visit to this port, which has become necessary for the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, noting that this route allowed the export of 28 million tons, and that in August 2023, Kiev unilaterally announced the creation of a route for their export, despite Russian threats of retaliation against ships entering and leaving Ukrainian ports.
“We are sending a message to the Kremlin that we will not be afraid”
With reference to the Russian strike in Odessaduring yesterday’s meeting with Volodymyr ZelenskyKyriakos Mitsotakis began his speech at the EPP conference in Bucharest.
Together we are sending a message to the Kremlin, we will not be afraid, we will continue to support Ukraine and the brave Ukrainian people for as long as it takesstressed the prime minister, noting that no border change is tolerated.
“In this dark hour for Europe with the war in Ukraine, we have shown our determination in supporting Ukraine against this war with a united front, which our enemies perhaps did not expect. So we continue to support Ukraine financially, militarily, we have taken sanctions against Russia and we are sending the message that no violation of territorial sovereign rights and international law will be accepted by the European family.”
The prime minister also said that Greece “has a very important role. We already contribute a lot to NATO and we would like to encourage all other countries to reach the minimum 2% defense spending on NATO, so that we can strengthen our defence.”
Mr. Mitsotakis congratulated the EU leadership for tackling contemporary challenges, citing Ursula von der Leyen: “First of all as a European People’s Party we should be very proud of everything we have achieved in the last five years. It was not a given, it took a lot of effort to bring Europe to where it is today and we as the European People’s Party are truly pioneers in preparing the Union for the new reality that we are now called upon to face.
I would therefore like to congratulate Ursula for her own role in this great success and for her steadfast leadership at a time when we are facing unimaginable challenges, an unprecedented pandemic that truly shook the entire planet, an illegal and brutal war in the heart of Europe and an energy crisis that threatened to destabilize our economies. And of course these challenges were met and we should be proud because our response was very effective.”
He also made special reference to economic progress of Greece saying that “we couldn’t have done it without European help”.
In closing, the Prime Minister emphasized: “Nothing happens in Europe without the EPP, so it must be the dominant force again.”
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Source: Skai
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