Russia's occupation of Ukraine has been going on for 25 day. Russia, which has suffered both losses of troops and technical equipment, has no intention to retreat. Moscow, which kills thousands of soldiers every day in foreign lands, has decided to completely occupy Ukraine and has even begun to recruit mercenaries from Syria and Central Africa.
The point is that although peace talks were discussed to end the war, this did not satisfy both sides. Moscow, which calls the Kyiv government a fascist regime, is both openly occupying the country and calling for its disarmament. "Of course, President Zelensky cannot accept this," former US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Matthew Bryza told in his interview to Ednews.
Here is the full interview with the US diplomat:
- Russia is still conducting military operations in Ukraine. Today, Ukraine is experiencing its most difficult days. According to experts, Russia made its first mistake in the conflict, including in Crimea. Russia may realize its mistake today, but it does not want to admit it because it is one of the world's superpowers. In your opinion, what are the consequences for Russia due to this "mistake"?
- Russia has made a huge mistake by invading Ukraine. By so doing, Russia has turned itself into the great enemy of the world -not only NATO and the US, but of countries all around the globe. It is not obviously, Russia itself hated, it is the regime of the president Vladimir Putin, which has invade the neighbouring country. We are the peoples love each other and the regime is now targeting innocent civilians, murdering them, bullying up their schools, maternity hospitals, violating international law and, president Putin and his closest associates will be accused of war crimes.
Russia at the same time has drawn upon itself the harshest economic sanctions in history, which has designed to destroy Russia’s economy and make it impossible for president Putin to fund his aggression against Ukraine. So, we are going to see tens of thousands of people in Russia, who had the highest paying jobs with international companies and banks, losing their jobs. We are seeing increasing inflation dramatically as the value of the rouble has fallen by 30% against the dollar and euro. Now, Russia has been a pariah, in other words a country that is viewed as a problem not as a partner around the world. This is having an enormous geopolitical impact in the world.
On the one hand it has unified the entire country of Ukraine like it has never been unified before. Russia’s actions have also unified transatlantic community; all of NATO like it has not been before. Its actions are now resulting in NATO doing exactly what president Putin did not want – expanding NATO’s military presence near Russia’s border with NATO’s member states. So in a nutshell, this invasion by president Putin is probably the biggest failure in Russian foreign policy since Stalin agreed with Hitler to invade Poland in 1939.
- Despite all the threats and sanctions from the West, Russia has implemented the "Ukrainian scenario". It did this by calling it a threat to its borders, trying to show its "power" to the whole world. In this case, can Ukraine now accept Russia's terms and sign a peace agreement? In general, what are the assumptions about the terms of both parties in the contract?
- There is no chance that Ukraine will accept all of Russia’s demand. Regarding Ukraine, it will not fulfil all of president Putin’s demands as some of them pertain to NATO’s enlargement since 1997 and NATO will never ever agree to pull back its military presence in all the countries that have joined in 1997, including Croatia, Bulgaria, and three Baltic states. That is not going to happen. That is number one.
Number two, as far as the demands, regarding Ukraine itself are concerned, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has indicated he is willing to consider possible neutrality for Ukraine, which means a recognition that Ukraine will not join NATO and that is one of president Putin’s strongest demands. However, Putin has made clear that he was not sufficient for him. He also wants Ukraine to demilitarise, in other words to abolish its military. And the other thing is that Putin has called the government of Ukraine a Nazi regime. However, Ukraine has had a democratic election and the Jewish politician in Kiev is a Russian speaker and is not discriminating Russian speakers in the country. Imagine, if it had happened in Azerbaijan and president Putin had invaded the country and called the government a Nazi regime, president Aliyev would have never agreed to the demands of Putin.
Putin currently is running out of money and troops. He is now hiring mercenaries from Syria and from the central African countries to come fight in Ukraine, because so many Russian soldiers have been killed so far.
- NATO did not close its airspace over Ukraine during the war because it did not want a direct military confrontation with Russia. Also it fears that this conflict will turn into a nuclear war. This is the opinion of some political analysts. What do you think about it? Has NATO really avoided Russia's nuclear weapons? Or were there other reasons not to close the airspace?
- I believe there are two reasons why NATO has not agreed to close the air space over Ukraine: One is that US, i.e. NATO doesn’t want to have a direct military confrontation with Russia. Certainly, it doesn’t want it to come to a nuclear war at the end. As is known, Russia uses chemical and biological weapons in the war. So, that is one reason. The second reason is that president Putin seems eager to pull in NATO’s member states in the war. And as the result, Russia wants to call the US an aggressor towards itself. Putin will not be able to get the US involved in the war and will never have a chance to blame the US and NATO for the war, otherwise US is a friendly country.
As regards support from US and NATO together with its allies, it has already been done and NATO is doing with military supply to help Ukraine to defend its air space. It of course, includes surface to air missile like the Stinger missile of the United States, which is helping Ukraine to defend its air space and should done many to Russian aircraft both fixed wing aircraft and Russian helicopters.
- Sanctions on Russia are already having a negative impact on countries in the region. In Russia, companies and factories fail and production is suspended. On the other hand, the West is trying to attract the countries of the region to trade relations, but neither the euro nor the dollar seems to be a good means for trade. Finally, what can be the way out of the countries affected by the growing economic crisis?
The idea of “neither the euro nor the dollar seems to be a good means for trade” is totally wrong. It is a fact that the world enormously depend on US dollar for international trade. It is number one reserve currency in the world, which means the largest volume of the trade in the world is conducted with the US dollar, including by the way for the Russia. Therefore, the US sanctions against the Russia that restrict Russia’s ability to use the dollar are so painful for it. And the second most used currency in the world for global trade is at the Euro. So, everybody wants to have dollar and Euro, have access to banks and ability to convert currencies and trade in the US dollar and in the Euro. However, in this situation Russian companies and factories are failing, people are losing jobs, production is suspended and that is the output of the sanctions. It doesn’t aim at the Russian people but to break the Russian economy, so Putin would not be able to continue his illegal invasion against Ukraine.
So the way out of this crisis is that all the countries which recognise what Russia is doing is illegal, need to stand together and keep the pressure on to make it impossible for president Putin to continue this war economically. If countries including the US are not feeling economic pain themselves, then they are not doing enough to squeeze the Russian economy. President Putin has made clear that his demands go far beyond Ukraine although it is the most important one for step. As I mentioned before, his ambition is to have a confrontation with NATO and force NATO to abandon the countries that they themselves wanted to be member of it. Besides that, president Putin suggested he would use nuclear weapons in pursue of his extreme demands. An international leader like that who is so determined to do anything to prevail over whom, he defined as his enemy simply must be stopped. There is no painless or simple way to do that. Everybody has to contribute again and again. If any economy is not suffering some sort of damage from the sanctions, it is not doing enough to resist president Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
