Russia-Ukraine War: President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zlansky, Conducted today (Monday) the first interview with the Russian media, since the war in Eastern Europe began about a month ago. In an interview, which lasted about an hour and a half, Zalansky said that “the Kremlin ignores the lives of Ukrainians and Russians alike, to the point that the Russian army has stopped its advance to collect the bodies of its fallen soldiers.”
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President Zlansky usually speaks Ukrainian in public, the official language of his country, but at the same time speaks Russian as his mother tongue. During the videos he uploaded to social media, he repeatedly switched to the Russian language in order to encourage President Putin’s critics inside Russia. The interview on Sunday was quite different from any public statement he has made so far, as this is the first time since the start of the war that he has talked at length with Russian journalists, in their language.
The interview was conducted for the Russian website “Meduza” based in Latvia. After finishing the interview, the journalists posted about it on social media and promised that they would soon publish the full interview. A few hours later, the Russian media regulator “Roskomnadzor” issued a demand to the Russian media not to publish the interview and warned that “an investigation has been opened against the reporters involved.”
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As mentioned, the new law signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin says that up to 15 years in prison can be imposed according to what Pike News publishes in public. Following this, the independent journalist, Dmitry Muratov, said that “we were forced not to publish the interview”, noting that his newspaper is published in Russia and is therefore under the jurisdiction of Russian law.
However, ceremonies and excerpts from the interview have already been circulated on the YouTube site and viewed more than a million times, in a matter of hours. During the interview, Zlansky said that “Ukraine will be willing to discuss the removal of restrictions on the Russian language and the adoption of a neutral geopolitical status. Any deal will have to be validated in a referendum that will take place after the Russian forces princess.” Zalansky described a possible deal that includes “security and neutral guarantees.”
In an interview, Zalansky accused Putin of “producing hostility between Russia and Ukraine.” The president added that “the war will have the opposite effect than what Putin apparently planned – to mark a clear split between the Russian and Ukrainian people, instead of reuniting them. Zalansky stressed that” this is not just a war, it is much worse. There has been a global, historical and cultural split over the past month. “
Russian invasion of Ukraine: Ruins in the capital Kyiv (Photo: Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine / Handout via REUTERS)Zalansky later accused Russia of incessantly firing on a civilian population and large-scale urban destruction: “The port city of Mariupol is full of corpses, no one takes them out, the corpses belong to both Russian soldiers and Ukrainian citizens, adding that” Russia does not see Ukraine as an independent state “.
As you may recall, the mayor of Mariupol, who has been under constant shelling from Russia in recent days, said this morning that the residents of his city are on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe. At the same time, a senior Ukrainian official said today that he has no high expectations ahead of the meeting between the parties’ representatives in Turkey, and that he does not anticipate a breakthrough regarding key issues. An estimate released this morning by British intelligence states that no significant shifts have been recorded in the deployment of the Russian army in the last 24 hours.