“A year ago I got a call at 5.00. And when I heard the phone ring, I immediately thought: this call should tell me that Kiev is being bombed. And now the voice on the other end of the phone tells me: “Kiev is being bombed.” Then I realized that it was turning over page of history and we are entering a dramatic situation. A year later, thousands of dead. Ukraine is being destroyed. Civilians are being bombed. The infrastructure of Ukraine is completely destroyed: there is no electricity, no water,” he said.
Borrell believes that the war is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, “but also for the Russian people.”
“This is a dramatic situation for the entire Russian people, not only for [президента России Владимира] Putin and his people. For the Russian people, this is a sad story. And we don’t know how long it will last,” he added.
Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In fact, the Russian Federation unleashed a war against Ukraine in 2014, when it occupied Crimea and part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
In April 2022, the Ukrainian Defense Forces expelled the occupiers from the northern regions of Ukraine, de-occupied part of the Kherson, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions in the fall.
The most intense fighting is taking place this winter in eastern Ukraine. According to the data of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the evening of February 23, the Russian Federation is advancing in five directions: Kupyansky, Limansky, Bakhmutsky, Avdeevsky and miners.
