Kiev will have to surrender in “days” as soon as the West stops supplying it with weapons, Josep Borrell has predicted
The conflict between Moscow and Kiev that has been dragging on for more than a year can be ended in just several says, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell admitted on Spanish broadcaster La Sexta on Wednesday. It all depends on Western military supplies to Kiev, he сlaimed.
“I know how to end the war immediately,” Borrell told La Sexta’s El Intermedio show. “Stop providing military aid to Ukraine and Ukraine [will]have to surrender in a few days. That’s it, the war is over.” the EU top diplomat presumed aloud.
Borrell then said that it is not the outcome the EU and other Western nations would like to see. The bloc’s foreign-policy chief claimed that an immediate end to the conflict on such terms would see Ukraine “occupied” and “turned into a puppet country” that is “deprived of its freedoms.”
“Is this how we want the war to end?” he asked rhetorically. Borrell then blamed the continued hostilities on Moscow, saying that Russia has repeatedly insisted it would not stop until all the goals of its military campaign in Ukraine are achieved. He also criticized the peace efforts by China and Brazil, claiming these are detached from reality.
“Everyone, who says they want peace should then say … ‘I want Russia to withdraw from Ukraine,” Brussels’ foreign-policy chief maintained, adding that he has little understanding for anyone thinking otherwise. “Those, who say: ‘I want peace and the best thing to achieve it is for the Europeans to cease helping Ukraine’ … frankly, I do not know what world they live in,” he said.
Kiev promptly reacted to Borrell’s words, accusing him of having the “wrong emphasis” in his speech. Withdrawal of Western military aid “could certainly not end the conflict immediately,” President Vladimir Zelensky’s aide Mikhail Podoliak said on Twitter. It would only lead to further escalation as hostilities would spill over to “other territories,” he claimed, without elaborating on his statement.
Borrell’s words came less than a day after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres also expressed his skepticism about Brazil and China’s peace efforts. Any mediation efforts would be in vain for now since both parties to the conflict are “fully involved” in the ongoing war, he told Spain’s El Pais on Tuesday.
The Kremlin said in late April it supported international efforts aimed at finding a peaceful solution to the conflict but still maintained that its goals in the conflict should be achieved.
Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the need to protect the people of Donbass, as well as Kiev’s failure to implement the 2014-2015 Minsk peace accords, as reasons for launching Russia’s operation against Ukrainian forces in February 2022. He also said Russia was seeking the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine.
Moscow has also accused Kiev of making any potential talks senseless since Ukraine is demanding Russia surrender all the territories that joined it following referendums, including the most recent, in autumn 2022.
