Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday accused Russia of committing a “genocide” in Ukraine to wipe out “the whole nation,” the day after several bodies were found in the streets of a town near Kyiv after Russian troops left.
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“Yes, it is genocide. The eradication of the whole nation and the people, we are citizens of Ukraine. We have more than 100 nationalities. It is about the extermination and extermination of all these nationalities,” he said in an interview with US CBS.
And he sighed, “And this is happening in the twenty-first century Europe,” denouncing the “torture of the whole nation.”
Ukraine had previously accused the Russian army of committing a “deliberate massacre” of civilians in the town of Bucha northwest of Kyiv, as well as other “horrors” in the now “liberated” areas. Additional sanctions against Moscow.
While the Europeans and Americans said that the perpetrators of atrocities should be held accountable, the Ukrainian president said he “believes in justice,” but also that punishment will not be enough to punish such actions.
I don’t know what law or prison sentence would be appropriate for that. As a father of two children and as a president, I think these people, if they go behind bars, they do very little.”
However, Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that he was ready for dialogue with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
After all this, it is difficult to imagine that we can still conduct negotiations with Russia. But this is on a personal level: As president, it is my duty to do so.
He warned that “there is no other way out than dialogue, if you do not want hundreds of thousands and millions of dead.”
But he said the summit with President Putin could only come after a “ceasefire”. “I can’t even hold a meeting as long as they’re bombing,” he said.
“We will both discuss. When the end of the war comes, after which we will discuss security guarantees together, the status of neutrality, while “preserving our sovereignty and our strong army,” Volodymyr Zelensky estimated, listing the Ukrainian proposals during the ongoing talks with Moscow.
“If this agreement is violated, we must have the possibility to defend ourselves,” he warned.
“As soon as we discuss all this, all forces must be withdrawn to ‘at least’ return to the situation before February 24, the day of the Russian invasion. “After their withdrawal, we can sit down with countries that will be guarantors of security,” he added.
These talks between Ukrainians and Russians in recent days made it possible to outline a possible agreement on a neutral Ukraine, but Kyiv is demanding that many countries, including the United States, be a “guarantor” of its security in the future. .
“The United States has not given us security guarantees,” President Zelensky said on CBS, “we haven’t received any at this point, and we need to receive them,” calling for a mechanism that really could be implemented rather than just a “piece of paper.”
