Kyiv,Feb 23,2022: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said a more reasonable solution on the issue of Ukrainian nuclear weapons could have been found if not for joint pressure from the United States and Russia. “At that time, a smarter decision could have been found if the United States together with Russia hadn’t taken a joint position to deprive Ukraine of its nuclear weapons,” Kuleba said during a Fox News interview on Tuesday when asked if it was wrong move for Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to eliminate nuclear weapons from its territory and to join the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty.
Putin’s “ultimate goal is to destroy Ukraine:”
Dmytro Kuleba says he knows what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long-term objective is.
“His ultimate goal is to destroy Ukraine. He’s not interested in parts of Ukraine. He is not interested in even keeping the entire country under his control,” Kubela said during a live interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Putin “wants the idea of the Ukrainian statehood to fail. This is his objective.”
Kuleba’s comments come one day after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into separatist-held parts of eastern Ukraine and signed decrees recognizing the independence of the Moscow-backed regions.
“What I know for certain, and this was eloquently proved, regretfully, in his address yesterday, is that he hates [the] Ukrainian statehood, he believes that Ukraine has no right to exist,” Kuleba said of Putin.
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday described Russia’s maneuverings in Ukraine as “the beginning of a Russian invasion.” Biden announced what he labeled “the first tranche of sanctions” to punish Moscow, including on two large financial institutions, Russian sovereign debt and Russian elites and their family members.
Though Kuleba supports the sanctions as laid out by Biden, calling them an “important” message, he maintains they are insufficient as the situation stands now.
n the topic of specific forthcoming sanctions, Kuleba suggested no single option or possibility should be left off the global table.
“We want every instrument available to be used in order to stop Putin,” he said. “If the price of saving a country is the most, harshest sanctions possible, then we should go for the harshest sanctions possible.”
While Kuleba told Tapper that the moving of Russian troops into the Ukrainian-controlled parts of the Donbas region would mark another crossing of a line by Putin, he noted that the ongoing conflict manifests itself along a multitude of fronts.
