US President Joe Biden assured Tuesday that “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia” and that the West has no intention of attacking Moscow, as the Russian president claimed.
“I speak once again to the Russian people. The United States and the nations of Europe are not trying to control or destroy Russia. The West is not conspiring to attack Russia, as Putin said today,” said Joe Biden during a speech in Warsaw, where he is now after a surprise visit to Kiev on Monday.
Vladimir Putin declared this morning that it is “impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield” and withdrew the country from the nuclear arms limitation agreement with the United States.
Putin’s speech, the first on the state of the nation in nearly two years, came three days before the first anniversary of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, which began in the early hours of February 24, 2022.
The President of the United States condemned the “cruelty” of Moscow, which “committed crimes against humanity, without shame or scruples”: “They attacked civilians with death and destruction, they used rape as a weapon of war”, he said.
“The hunger of the autocrats cannot be satisfied, we must resist it. And the autocrats understand only one word: no, no, no. You will not take my country, you will not take my freedom, you will not take my future off.” declared Joe Biden, adding that “a dictator can never put an end to the people’s love of freedom,” and that nations around the world will not accept “a world ruled by fear and violence.”
This is Biden’s second official visit to Poland in the past 12 months.
On Wednesday, the North American president was scheduled to meet in Warsaw with the heads of state and government of nine countries on the eastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which are geographically closer to Russia.
A year after the start of the military offensive, carried out under the pretext of the need to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine for Russian security, Putin has not achieved the goal of complete control of Donbass, even if he succeeded a land corridor connecting eastern Ukraine with the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea (in 2014), across the coast of the Sea of Azov.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian and Western sources have warned of the start of a new major Russian offensive, a scenario that has prompted calls to increase arms supplies to Kiev.
In response to the Russian offensive, the international community has imposed unprecedented political and economic sanctions on Russia.
Source: DN
