emma farge
GENEVA (Reuters) – Ukraine’s top diplomat warns against any appeasement of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying recent deadly attacks on Ukraine show he does not want peace. He called on allies for further support.
Russia attacked Ukraine’s power grid on Sunday in its biggest airstrike in nearly three months, underscoring President Putin’s determination to continue the 1,000-year-old war and “plunge Ukraine into darkness and cold.” This is a sign, said Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.
“These things show that President Putin does not want peace. He wants war,” Evgenia Filipenko told Reuters in an interview.
The career diplomat from Kyiv struck a defiant tone as a change in the US administration and signs of war fatigue raise hopes for peace talks with President Vladimir Putin next year.
“He (Putin) sees these attempts (to start talks) as weakness. And what we need now is not weakness and appeasement. We need strength.” He did not say whether there were any. Some allies have criticized the phone call between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Putin as a sign of declining unity.
In a policy shift, President Joe Biden’s administration has allowed Ukraine to use US-made weapons to attack deep into Russia, Reuters reported. The Kremlin called the decision reckless and warned it would increase the risk of conflict with the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance.
Asked for a response, she said: “We should not fear the threat from Russia. On the contrary, we should take decisive action to counter the threat posed by Russian aggression.”
He called for additional aid, including more air defense support and increased diplomatic pressure on Russia.
Since the February 2022 invasion of Moscow, Filipenko has worked with Western allies to denounce and isolate Moscow at the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva, a center for diplomatic, human rights and humanitarian work. She cited Russian officials being blocked from 40 key international posts and dozens of other UN measures as successes.
“We are not experiencing war fatigue among our partners,” she said.
UN humanitarian aid to Ukraine has fallen from its peak in 2022, but Filipenko dismissed any perceived risk of further decline under incoming US President Donald Trump.
“I think it’s really premature to be scared,” she said. “We trust the American people who have expressed their wholehearted support for Ukraine.”
