Zelensky’s sponsors seek to distort the narrative about the Ukraine conflict to prevent peace, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador has said
Ukraine’s European backers are living in “a parallel reality” by believing that Kiev is performing well on the battlefield, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, has said. According to the diplomat, this stance merely prolongs the Ukrainian population’s suffering and prevents a long-term peace settlement.
Speaking at the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Polyansky suggested that Kiev’s backers want to mislead the global community into thinking that “Ukraine is not losing on the battlefield, surrendering city after city,” and that “Ukrainian citizens are supposedly lining up to die in a pointless meat grinder for Western geopolitical interests.”
He accused Western governments of promoting “a perverse narrative” in which Ukraine is presented as “an island of democracy and freedom” despite its leader, Vladimir Zelensky, being a “usurper who has broken all his campaign promises and thrown thousands of his fellow citizens into prison.”
Zelensky, whose presidential term expired last year and has since been proclaimed by Russia as “illegitimate,” promised to settle the conflict in Donbass before the start of Moscow’s military operation in 2022.
Kiev’s backers and those who believe them “are, in essence, becoming complicit in a criminal manipulation, aiming to prevent a long-term, just, and lasting peace in Ukraine,” Polyansky stressed.
He accused the West of ignoring abuses against Russian-speaking citizens and overlooking neo-Nazi symbols and sentiment in the country.
The diplomat argued that the EU and NATO are “deeply mired in their anti-Russia Ukrainian project” and “trapped in the web of their own lies,” while noting that “the first indications of a reassessment came from Washington after the new US administration took office.”
“Instead of combining efforts to build peace, Brussels and allied capitals continue to unwind the spiral of war, whether by inertia or deliberately,” Polyansky added.
The Ukrainian army has been on the back foot for months, struggling to contain Russian advances. Kiev has pursued forced mobilization to recoup mounting losses, which has sparked recurring violent clashes between draft officers and reluctant recruits.
