Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that if Russia had been punished when it annexed Crimea in 2014, the current war, which is now in its 36th day, would not have happened.
“We have to right these horrible mistakes, and right them now,” the Ukrainian said in a speech to Australia’s parliament.
For Zelensky, the response that the international community is now giving to Moscow’s offensive — which he considers mild and insufficient — could be decisive in possible future conflicts.
“If we don’t stop Russia now, if we don’t hold Russia accountable, then some other countries in the world that are looking forward to a similar war against their neighbors will decide that these things are also possible for them,” he said. “The fate of global security is now decided.”
Although it did not mention any specific country, the statement could be interpreted as a warning about China’s position on Taiwan.
The thesis gains strength from two factors: the fact that Zelensky bets on the use of historical references from the past and present of the countries that receive him and the recent posture of his interlocutors at the time. Australia has seen a series of clashes on several fronts with Beijing and has expressed concerns about the increasingly aggressive language used by the Xi Jinping regime against the island that China considers a rebellious province.
Five weeks after the invasion that destroyed entire cities and created an influx of refugees that now exceeds 4 million, Zelensky said in a speech in Ukraine that the country was preparing to receive new attacks from Russia in the eastern region, where the forces of Moscow would now be concentrated after its offensive against Kiev was stopped by Ukrainian resistance.
He said the move of Russian troops away from Kiev and Chernihiv could not be read as a withdrawal, but rather as a “consequence of the work of the Ukrainian defenders”.
The president, of course, tries to emphasize the role of resistance in the troops under his command, but he knows that the reality is less romanticized.
The Kremlin’s mission in Ukraine now focuses on “liberating” the Donbass region in the east of the country. There are the provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk, whose separatist leaders have received Russian support since 2014 and had their independence recognized by Moscow three days before the start of the war.
Targeted by Russia for weeks precisely because of its strategic position between Donbass and Crimea, Mariupol remains under siege. In four weeks, most of the city’s buildings were destroyed. Moscow announced a ceasefire at the site for the establishment of humanitarian corridors and, on Thursday, according to Ukrainian authorities, a convoy of buses should enter the city to evacuate civilians who have not yet managed to flee the conflict.
While the future of the war remains uncertain, Western officials say that Russian President Vladimir Putin was misled by his generals about the poor performance of his military in the neighboring country.
“We have information that Putin felt cheated by the Russian military, which resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,” Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, told a news conference on Wednesday.
“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about the poor performance of the Russian military and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions, because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth.”
