Leonid Kuchma, the President of Ukraine in 1994-2005, said that today Volodymyr Zelenskyi has experience that almost none of his fellow presidents have. Leonid Kuchma made such a statement in an interview with the Japanese news agency “Kyodo Tsushin”.
Zelensky should do what he does with more confidence – Kuchma
At the request of journalists, Kuchma refused to give any advice to the current president of Ukraine through the mass media and emphasized that Volodymyr Zelenskyy can ask for advice himself if necessary. “With all due respect to the media, I do not think that this is the way I should advise the President. If Volodymyr Oleksandrovich needs my advice, he will contact me personally. Fortunately, we have such an opportunity. However, today I would advise him just doing what he’s doing with more confidence,” he said.
According to Kuchma, in a short time Zelensky has turned into not only a world-class politician, but a real leader. “Today, he has the kind of experience that almost none of his fellow presidents have. And he uses it correctly,” emphasized the second president of Ukraine.
Kuchma about Putin: “The maniac will not stop”
In addition, 85-year-old Kuchma sharply criticized the idea of a truce with Russia, comparing the aggressor country to a “maniac” who seeks to kill. “When we are called to stop the fight so that there are no victims, it seems that it is a boxer who is called to stop a duel with an opponent stronger than him. Like, stop, and there will be no more nosebleeds, new bruises… If the boxer stops, so be it But we don’t have boxing, we were attacked by a crazy, wild maniac for whom there are no rules and who came not to box, but to kill, which Russia does not even hide. The maniac will not stop,” Kuchma said.
He also emphasized that the “ceasefire” would leave the occupied territories in the east and south of Ukraine under the power of Moscow. “Are you ready to leave our people alone with those who are now burning out all Ukrainian manifestations there, who have established a regime of political terror there that is worse than in Russia itself, who, after all, is capable of open genocide, as in Buch? Are you ready? We – No!” said the second president of Ukraine.
Kuchma also stated that ending the struggle with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin would mean contributing to his imperial and revanchist plans. “Remember how the West’s consent to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland region turned into a full occupation of Czechoslovakia, and then an attack on Poland using the industrial potential of the Czech Republic. For Putin, this tactic (as it was for Hitler at one time) is to strengthen his potential for waging war After all, his regime is already conducting a total violent mobilization of Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, inciting them to commit fratricide and threatening other European countries,” he noted.
Earlier in an interview with The Guardian, Leonid Kuchma said that on February 24, 2022, the day of the full-scale invasion of Russia, he and his wife Lyudmila were in the center of Kyiv and did not believe that Putin would really dare to go to Kyiv. “I was sure that Putin was capable of invading, but I was not sure if he would decide to do it,” Kuchma said.
According to him, Vladimir Putin’s goal was not only to seize land, but also to destroy the “concept” of Ukraine itself as a “competitive alternative to Russia.”
He also said that the first signs of Moscow’s revisionist ambitions appeared in 2003. Then Putin, Russia’s new president, claimed the small island of Tuzla in the Black Sea, between Crimea and the Russian mainland. In this case, Putin backed down. He gave further “clear signals” of his intention to expand Russia’s borders by force when he sent troops to neighboring Georgia in 2008. After that, in the spring of 2014, he seized Crimea.
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