Ukraine says its victory in the war is “a matter of time” after reclaiming Jerson
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kuleba, said on Saturday that the “liberation” of the city of Kherson by the Ukrainian army adds to other battles won by his country and that victory against the Russian invaders is only “a matter of time”.
Thus Kuleba expressed himself at a press conference in the Cambodian capital, where he is a special guest at the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to which he asked to condemn Russia. “In our defensive war against the enemy, Ukraine will win, it’s a matter of time (…) Every inch of Ukraine will be liberated,” Kuleba said at the Sokha hotel in Phnom Penh, where the meetings took place of the leaders of ASEAN and its external partners, including the United States, Russia and China.
Kuleba justified his optimism in the victories that Ukrainian forces have won in several battles, such as in Kiev, in the occupied north-eastern areas of the country and in the Kherson region.
Similarly, the minister also denounced the Russian army for torturing and killing civilians and attacking infrastructure not for military reasons but to harm the population. In this regard, he appealed to the international community, including the countries of Southeast Asia, to supply transformers, generators and parts to Ukraine to help repair the electrical infrastructure needed in Ukraine’s dead of winter.
In Phnom Penh, Kuleba signed a friendship and cooperation treaty with ASEAN and met his counterparts from Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.
The minister thanked ASEAN for its support to Ukraine and asked it to condemn Russian aggression against Ukraine, as “it is not only an attack on the sovereignty of a sovereign country, but an attack on the Charter of Nations Unite”. The head of Ukrainian diplomacy ventured that Asian countries “do not want Russia’s model of behavior to be repeated in Asia with the use of force, the violation of borders and massacres against the civilian population”.
The Ukrainian minister ruled out a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who was also present at the summit, but said he was available if Russia is “sincere” about negotiating. But he regretted that the Russian authorities are demanding a “total surrender without conditions”, which he called unacceptable for Ukraine, and recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin has refused to sit down to negotiate with his Ukrainian counterpart.
Kuleba appealed to all countries and warned that this is not about invading Ukraine, but about “big countries having the right to invade small countries.” (EFE)
