Dweapon advantage and maximum penalties. Three months after Russia invaded his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for faster international aid. “The sanctions should be maximum, so that Russia and any other potential aggressor who wants to wage a brutal war against its neighbor clearly know the immediate consequences of their actions”, he said during a videoconference intervention for the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Monday 23 May.
At a time when kyiv says it is facing an “increasingly difficult” situation in the Donbass (East), under intense Russian bombardment, Volodymyr Zelensky also called for more weapons for his country, regretting that the support of the international community has not always been fast enough. “If we had received 100% of our needs in February, the result would have been tens of thousands of lives saved. That is why Ukraine needs all the weapons we ask for, not just the ones that have been supplied,” he said.
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Ukraine in the spotlight at Davos
The Ukrainian government is also calling for an intensification of sanctions against Russia, which it would like to completely isolate from international trade. “There should be no trade with Russia,” said Volodymyr Zelensky, calling among other things for “an embargo on Russian oil” and measures against “all Russian banks, without exception”. Western countries have implemented a whole series of economic sanctions against Russia. But if the United States and the United Kingdom have given up importing Russian oil, the European Union is struggling to agree on the subject, because some of its member countries are very dependent on gas and oil. Russians.
Ukraine takes center stage this week in Davos, where the meeting of global political and economic elites organized by the WEF returns after a two-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many Ukrainian politicians have planned to make the trip there in person, including several ministers, parliamentarians, or the mayors of kyiv and Boutcha.
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