Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 12
Reuters: A top Ukrainian diplomat warned against any appeasement of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the latest deadly attacks on Ukraine showed he had no desire for peace, and asked allies for further help.
Russia pounded Ukraine’s power grid in the largest air strike in almost three months on Sunday in a move that Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said showed Putin’s determination to continue the 1,000 day-old war and “plunge Ukraine into darkness and cold”.
“They demonstrate that Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants war,” Yevheniia Filipenko told Reuters in an interview.
The career diplomat from Kyiv struck a defiant tone amid growing expectations of peace talks with Putin next year due to a change in the US administration and signs of war weariness.
“He (Putin) sees these attempts (to start talks) as a weakness. And what we need now is not weakness and appeasement. We need strength,” she said, without saying who was seeking talks. Some allies have criticised German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s phone call with Putin as a sign of weakened unity.
In a policy shift, President Joe Biden’s administration has allowed Ukraine to use US-made weapons to strike deeper into Russia, Reuters reported.
The Kremlin has called the decision reckless and warned that it would raise the risk of confrontation with the US-led NATO alliance.
UN humanitarian aid for Ukraine has fallen since its 2022 peak but Filipenko dismissed the perceived risk of further falls under US President-elect Donald Trump.
