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In this edition of The Interview, journalist Irene Savio, France 24’s special envoy to Ukraine, spoke with Sergei Petukhov, former Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Justice and professor of international law. Petukhov spoke about what he condemns as war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine and about the state of peace negotiations between Moscow and kyiv to end the conflict, which in his opinion has no visible way out.
The Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation in Ukraine for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In this regard, Sergei Petukhov believes that “the Russians are attacking civilians. And these days everyone has a smartphone with which they can record everything that happens, so there is a lot of evidence of these crimes and with that I am sure that it will be possible to make a trial in the International Criminal Court and establish all the crimes that are happening in Ukraine,” Petukhov said.
The former deputy minister condemns the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol as a war crime by Russian troops and assures that every day there are attacks in cities such as Kharkiv, Mariupol, Tchernihiv and kyiv in which civilians die. “In all these attacks there are no military targets, so the Russians attack hospitals, neighborhoods, schools and universities, all these are civilian targets that could not be attacked in war. And they are not unique cases, it is a common practice among Russian troops “, it states.
The negotiations for the peace process between Ukraine and Russia seem to have become stuck. Regarding the state of these talks, the former Ukrainian politician thinks that “the Russians cannot be believed, we cannot believe that President Putin will change his position at some point. That is why, if we do not see guarantees from other countries, we cannot do anything agreement with Russia.
The former deputy justice minister thinks that Vladimir Putin “wants to re-establish the Soviet Union and that is not acceptable to the Ukrainians, because in the Soviet Union there is no future for Ukraine as a nation, for its culture or for its language. That is why it is very difficult to have an agreement with Russia, unless Moscow changes its position”.
“We are in the middle of the war,” Sergei Petukhov asserted, basing himself on the fact that the clashes have been going on since 2014 with the accession of Crimea to Russia and the conflicts in Donbass. “During all those eight years we had a conflict in Donbass and people were dying almost every week, although it was a low-level war. But I imagine that something like this can happen in any other country, because Putin could decide who he is going to attack more forward,” he added.
Regarding when the war could end, our guest considers himself “pessimistic”, however he considers that the Russian population could infer the end of the conflict. “At some point the Russian population will understand that things are not working as they wanted and will put pressure on their government,” he concludes.
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