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Putin's defiance and humiliation

2023-02-20T19:25:23.121Z


There is no message of greater political forcefulness or even military significance than Biden's visit to Zelenski


By surprise.

Accompanied by alarm sirens.

On momentous, highly symbolic days, the first anniversary of the Russian invasion and the ninth anniversary of the massacre of the Euromaidan martyrs, the hundred or so demonstrators riddled with bullets by the provocateurs and the special policemen of Victor Yanukovych, the then expelled Putinist president, just as they began surreptitiously the Russian invasion of Donbas and the annexation of Crimea.

With the highly significant images broadcast by television all over the world of the walk of both presidents through the monumental center of the capital, the impressive golden bulbs of the Cathedral of San Miguel, and the Maidan wall where the Heavenly Hundred is worshiped , those who fell in 2014,

It has been an unusual visit, historic like few others.

There is no message of greater political forcefulness or significance, even military.

Putin wants to obliterate the Ukrainian nation with war and the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief of the most powerful army in the world, goes to his capital to personally assure his president, Volodimir Zelensky, that he will not allow the Russian dictator to do your own thing or deal, with the setback that would mean the defeat of Ukraine, a defeat to democracy and the civilized world order, governed by the rules.

Biden's trip to kyiv by train from Poland was not obvious, without the possibility of using the cumbersome and armored air means of the US army.

It was fraught with risk and a challenge by an 80-year-old president to a dictator ten years his junior who lives in seclusion and isolation in the Kremlin and has only very occasionally ventured extremely cautiously and briefly into Crimea. occupied by his army.

Biden has arrived in kyiv at a special moment, in which all parties are laying their cards on the card table.

The military of an extensive Russian offensive that is announced especially on the front between Donbas and Crimea for the start of spring, perhaps next Friday, coinciding with the exact anniversary of the invasion, although many military sources are skeptical about the capabilities Russian, consider that the operation has already started and is getting very mediocre results.

Also the diplomats, after the deployment of positions observed this past weekend at the Munich Security Conference, in which the announcement by Beijing of a peace plan has created enormous expectations and not a few sensitivities,

Biden's identification with the positions of the Zelensky government, expressed with extreme clarity in Munich in the debate between the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kuleba, constitutes the framework in which the Peace proposals coming from Beijing, hardly acceptable if they are limited to a fragile ceasefire that serves to resupply Russian troops or if they do not contemplate the restoration of the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of Ukraine guaranteed by all treaties and pacts international agreements, including the United Nations Charter, to which Russia is bound.

They are summed up in a few words from Biden with epic and compromising resonances: "One year later, kyiv resists, Ukraine resists, democracy resists."

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-02-20

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