Ukraine: Russian territorial ambitions ‘directed on a vast area from Warsaw to Sofia’, says Zelenskiy

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the European Union on Wednesday to let his country start on the road to membership of the bloc, warning that Russia’s territorial ambitions stretched from Warsaw to Sofia.

In a speech to both chambers of the Czech parliament via a video link, Mr Zelenskiy also called for more EU sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th.

“Russia is not interested only in our [cities of] Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Kharkiv and Kyiv. No, its ambitions are directed on a vast area from Warsaw to Sofia,” he said, without citing evidence for his assertion.

“As in the past, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the first step that the Russian leadership needs to open the way to other countries, to the conquest of other peoples.”

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The EU has adopted six rounds of sanctions against Russia, and Ukraine is seeking a seventh round to increase pressure on Russia to end the war.

The European Commission is expected to announce a decision on Ukraine’s request for candidate status this week in advance of an EU summit next week. Having candidate status would be a preliminary step in a long process to accession.

“To grant Ukraine candidate status now is to prove that European unification is real and that European values really work and are not just indicated in certain documents,” Mr Zelenskiy said.

He said the Czech people — following Nazi German occupation during the second World War and decades of Soviet domination after the war — knew how compromise ends and what comes of concessions to tyranny.

“The person who wants to seize everything will never stop at taking only part of what they want,” Mr Zelenskiy said.

Russia did not immediately comment on his remarks. Moscow calls the war in Ukraine a special military operation against Ukraine’s military and what it portrays as dangerous nationalists.

Turning point

Earlier on Wednesday, Russia told Ukrainian forces holed up in a chemical plant in the embattled eastern city of Severodonetsk to lay down their arms.

Ukraine says more than 500 civilians are trapped alongside soldiers inside Azot, a chemical factory where its forces have resisted weeks of Russian bombardment and assaults that have reduced much of Severodonetsk to ruins.

Col Gen Mikhail Mizintsev, the officer who was in charge of the devastating siege of Mariupol, said fighters should “stop their senseless resistance and lay down arms” from 8am Moscow time (5am Irish time) on Wednesday.

The Russian army has shifted the bulk of its military efforts to capturing Severodonetsk in its attempt to take full control of Luhansk and Donetsk, collectively known as Donbas.

Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk, told Ukrainian television on Tuesday that two more Russian battalion tactical groups had been moved into the area. The fight for Severodonetsk is turning into one of the war’s bloodiest battles and is seen as a potential turning point in Russia’s advances in Donbas.

Mr Zelenskiy has said the outcome of the battle for the Donbas region will determine the course of the war, adding that Ukraine’s forces are suffering “painful losses” in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Mr Zelenskiy has repeated his call for the West to step up the provision of heavy weapons to Ukraine. Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Malyar, said the country had received only 10 per cent of what it asked for and there was no path to victory without the aid: “No matter how hard Ukraine tries, no matter how professional our army is, without the help of western partners we will not be able to win this war”.

Mr Zelenskiy added that Ukraine does not have enough anti-missile systems to shoot down Russian projectiles targeting its cities. “Our country does not have enough of them ... there can be no justification in delays in providing them”.

US president Joe Biden told Mr Zelenskiy during a call on Wednesday that the US would provide an additional $1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine for its efforts in the eastern Donbas.

The supports includes “additional artillery and coastal defense weapons, as well as ammunition for the artillery and advanced rocket systems,” Mr Biden said in a statement from the White House.

Elsewhere, the Nato chief said further artillery support for Ukraine will be discussed by members on Wednesday.

Secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at The Hague: “Ukraine should have more heavy weapons. And Nato allies and partners have provided heavy weapons for a long time, but they are also stepping up.”

He added the matter will be addressed on Wednesday in Brussels at the Nato headquarters of the contact group for support to Ukraine, saying: “(Ukrainians) need to be prepped for the long haul, as there is no way to predict how and when this war will end.”

Mr Stoltenberg said the military alliance must build out “even higher readiness” and strengthen its weapons capabilities along its eastern border, adding the alliance needed a “more robust and combat-ready forward presence and an even higher readiness and more pre-positioned equipment and supplies”.

His comments come in advance of a summit in Madrid at the end of the month.

Leaders of seven European Nato members pledged support for applications by Sweden and Finland to join the alliance. “My message on Swedish and Finnish membership is that I strongly welcome that. It’s a historic decision. It will strengthen them, it will strengthen us,” Mr Stoltenberg told reporters after a meeting at The Hague on Tuesday.

Mr Biden said temporary silos will be built along the border with Ukraine, including in Poland, in a bid to help export more grain.

Referring to the 20 million tons of grain locked in Ukraine, Mr Biden told a union convention in Philadelphia: “It can’t get out through the Black Sea because it’ll get blown out of the water ... so we’re going to build silos, temporary silos, on the borders of Ukraine, including in Poland”.

On Tuesday, Pope Francis said Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was “perhaps somehow provoked” as he recalled a conversation in the run-up to the war in which he was warned that Nato was “barking at the gates of Russia”. — Guardian/Reuters