Ukrainians have lost faith in the former actor, Moscow’s envoy to the UN has said
Vladimir Zelensky has betrayed Ukraine and his electoral promises by turning the country into a puppet of the US and its allies to be used against Russia, Moscow’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said.
Addressing the UN Security Council on Thursday, Russia’s permanent representative to the world body pointed the finger at the actor-turned-politician’s heel turn.
“He ran for office with slogans about peace with Russia, equal rights for Russian speakers, protection of the Orthodox faith, and people voted for him because of this,” Nebenzia said, referring to the 2019 presidential election in Ukraine.
“However, after that, in favor of Western geopolitical interests, he chose the opposite path and made his country a ‘pawn’ against Russia, hoping that with US efforts it could become a ‘queen’. On this treacherous path for his people, he sold fertile lands and strategic enterprises to Western corporations for next to nothing. And this process continues,” the Russian diplomat said.
The reason the Ukrainian front is crumbling is that “the people simply stopped believing in the former actor, who lost all legitimacy back in May,” Nebenzia added.
Zelensky has argued that the martial law declared in 2022, when the Russia-Ukraine conflict escalated, precludes elections from being held. The Ukrainian constitution contains no provision for extending the mandate of a president under any circumstances, however.
Russian forces have liberated more territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic over the past month than Ukraine was able to seize in their entire 2023 “counteroffensive,” Nebenzia noted.
Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined the minimum conditions for ceasefire talks to begin, among those a full Ukrainian retreat from all Russian territory, including the regions that voted to join Russia. The Kremlin has quashed all recent reports of secret peace talks as fake news.
Addressing the council, the Russian diplomat also noted that Moscow’s position on resolving the conflict has not changed.
“We would like to warn you right away that there will be no repetition of the Minsk agreements scenario, no freezing of the front so that Zelensky’s regime can lick its wounds. Just as there will be no entry of Ukraine into NATO, in one way or another,” Nebenzia said.
All of the objectives of the Russian military operation – including the demilitarization and “denazification” of Ukraine – will be achieved, he added.
