Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used his speech at the Davos forum on Monday to urge the world to support his country with more weapons and impose “maximum” sanctions against Moscow.
Addressing the World Economic Forum via video link, Zelenskiy said tens of thousands of people could have been saved if Kyiv had received “100 percent of our needs once in February” when Russia invaded Ukraine.
“Therefore, Ukraine needs all the weapons we ask for, not just what they offered us,” added Zelensky, who appeared in an olive shirt surrounded by Ukrainian flags.
He called for an oil embargo on Russia, sanctions on all of its banks, and the abandonment of its information technology sector, while urging all foreign companies to leave.
“There should be no trade with Russia,” he said at a meeting of key politicians and business leaders. “I think there are no such sanctions against Russia yet, but there should be.”
While the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have taken steps to ban Russian oil and gas, the European Union is divided over similar measures, with EU countries such as Germany and Hungary heavily dependent on Russian gas imports.
The war in Ukraine dominates the talks at Davos, the first meeting of the World Economic Forum in more than two years. The Covid outbreak forced the cancellation of the 2021 visitation event and reschedule it to May this year.
US President Joe Biden said in Tokyo yesterday that Russia “has to pay a long-term price” for its “brutality in Ukraine” amid sanctions imposed by the US and its allies.
Biden said “it’s not just limited to Ukraine” because “unless sanctions are kept at multiple levels, what signal will be sent to China about the cost of trying to control Taiwan by force?”
Biden approved a nearly $40 billion aid package to Ukraine during a visit to South Korea as part of his first trip as US president to Asia.
Ukrainians are facing an “increasingly difficult” situation in the Donbas, where Russia has been bombing the city of Severodonetsk in Luhansk “around the clock” and a Russian soldier was convicted in the first war crimes trial in Kyiv yesterday.
Moscow is intensifying its bombardment of the Donbass, where, according to the governor of the Luhansk region, Sergei Gaidai, there are units that left the Kharkiv region (northeast), the forces that besieged Mariupol (southeast), militants from the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Chechen forces and reinforcements from Siberia and the Far East of Russia are being mobilized, said the governor of the Luhansk region Sergei Gaidai.
“All Russian forces are concentrated in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions,” Gaidai said on the Telegram app, adding that the same applies to weapons, “everything is concentrated here,” especially the S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft missiles. » Anti-missile. Gaidai stressed that Severodonetsk, which is a key point in the battle for Donbass, is under fire from Russian troops “around the clock”. “They are using scorched earth tactics, they are deliberately destroying the city” with aerial bombardments, multiple rocket launchers, mortars and tank shelling of buildings, he explained.
87 killed in Russian strike on Ukrainian base
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced yesterday that 87 people were killed in a Russian strike on a military base earlier this month in an area of northern Ukraine captured by Ukrainian forces.
“Today, there are 87 victims under the rubble in Desna,” Zelensky said during a speech at the Davos summit. 87 bodies of the dead”, referring to the May 17 explosion in the village where the Ukrainian military base is located in the Chernihiv region.
The number of forced migrants in the world has reached more than 100 million people.
Yesterday, the United Nations warned that Russia’s war in Ukraine has raised the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide to more than 100 million for the first time in history.
“The number of people forced to flee conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution has for the first time exceeded the staggering figure of 100 million driven by the war in Ukraine and other deadly conflicts,” the UNHCR said in a statement.
UNHCR said in a statement that this “alarming” figure should shock the world and push it to end the conflicts that are forcing a record number of people to leave their homes.
Russian soldier convicted of war crime and sentenced to life in prison
On Thursday, a Kyiv court found a 21-year-old Russian soldier who killed a civilian guilty of a war crime and sentenced him to life in prison. This is the first sentence passed on a Russian soldier since the invasion.
“The court found (Vadim) Shishimarin guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment,” Judge Sergey Agafonov said. Earlier, Shishimarin admitted in court that he killed 62-year-old Ukrainian Oleksandr Shelepov in northeastern Ukraine on the first day of the Russian invasion, and the defense said the soldier would appeal the verdict.
African Union asks for help from Germany to cope with the consequences of the war in Ukraine
The current president of the African Union, Senegal, Macky Sall, asked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to help Berlin counter the consequences of the war in Ukraine on the African continent, noting that he would visit Kyiv and Moscow in the near future.
This is Schultz’s first visit to Africa after six months in office.
The German chancellor stressed to the President of Senegal that Westerners are not indifferent to rising food and fuel prices and the threat of starvation, promising to do everything in his power to help.
Sall said the conflict “affects us” but takes place “on a different continent,” adding, “We want peace for Africa.”