Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna on Sunday said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy has appeared to have changed — and that his winning scenario now is a “long lasting war” with Ukraine.
In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week,” Stefanishyna said, nevertheless, there was some reason to cautiously hail “great news.”
“We see the Russian troops have been moving away from the major parts of the western Ukraine, in Kharkiv,” Stefanishyna said.
“But we are not, like, over-optimistic in that regard,” she added. “We see that Putin has readjusted his strategy. And he goes on the only possible winning scenario for him is the long lasting war, which is not the case for us and for the democratic world.”
Stefanishyna said it was good news that “we’re getting back a significant amount of our territories around Ukraine.”
“The unconditional victory still remains the way forward, although we can confirm that the Russian Navy and warships are in full preparedness to continue shelling and basically bombarding of the eastern part of Ukraine,” she said.
“We see that the casualties happening throughout all of the territories of Ukraine is repeating.”
Stefanishyna also lamented that NATO hasn’t been in the past as quick accepting Eastern Europe nations as it was for Finland.
“It only serves one very obvious argument that NATO has learned on the mistakes and the political mistakes back in 2008 by making promises without delivering on decisions in terms of membership which has basically led to three wars, two of which are now happening on Ukrainian territory,” she said, referring to the year NATO allies welcomed Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership but never delivered.
“Promises are not the way to put a security architecture [with] more strength,” she said. “So the decision to make this application… is also the lesson learned … and we hope that now when it comes to the concentration of Ukrainian application to European Union, it would happen also much faster.”
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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