(Kyiv) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted Tuesday that Vladimir Putin still has a way to “escalate”, calling on his G7 counterparts to help create an air shield to stop Russian strikes on his country two days ago.
Posted at 11:06 am
“The Russian leader, who at the end of his reign still has the means to escalate,” Zelensky said during an emergency virtual meeting of the leaders of the G7 countries, according to the English text of his speech broadcast by Ukrainian. presidency.
“I ask you to strengthen public efforts to financially help create an air shield for Ukraine,” he said, saying that “millions of people would be grateful to the G7 for this assistance.”
The Ukrainian president also accused Moscow on Tuesday of wanting to drag Belarus into the conflict and called “a mission of international observers stationed on the border between Ukraine and Belarus to monitor the security situation there.”
“Russia is trying to drag Belarus directly into this war,” he said.
On Monday, Minsk announced the formation of a joint military force with its Russian ally, and accused Kyiv of instigating an attack against Belarus, raising fears of its direct intervention in the conflict in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated that “Ukraine did not and does not plan military operations against Belarus.”
The Ukrainian leader again called on his Western allies to tighten sanctions against Moscow and military aid to Ukraine after two days of heavy bombardment by the Russian army.
The Ukrainian president counted “more than a hundred missiles launched in less than two days against civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
“Russia wants to cause chaos in Ukraine and in the entire democratic world, and therefore it uses everything: from missile strikes to the seizure of a nuclear power plant, threats of nuclear disaster, sabotage of infrastructure in Europe to a deliberate attempt to destroy Ukrainian energy facilities,” he said.
Moscow, for its part, claims to have hit Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in several regions, in response to the partial destruction of the Crimean bridge on Saturday and after several failures on the military ground.
Volodymyr Zelensky finally reiterated to his G7 counterparts that he does not want to negotiate with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin: “There can be no dialogue with this Russian leader who has no future,” he said.
