Ukraine.- We are in a war terrifying on a grand scale. Russia is firing not only at military objects and civil infrastructure, but at residential buildings, hospitals, especially children’s and maternity hospitals; in schools, kindergardenes (kindergartens)”, informed Olexandra Kovalyóva for EL DEBATE.
During the interview, through a call via WhatsApp, the academic researcher, doctor in Political Science, specialized in International Relations and expert in foreign policy of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, from a basement in Lviv (a city located in the West of Ukraineabout 70 kilometers from the Polish border), in an old building that was built in the 16th or 17th century, said that Russia is accusing Ukraine of such absurd things as Nazism and genocide against Russian and Russian-speaking people and in intentions to install NATO bases on their territory to attack them.
“Now he is spreading false information, insisting that it is the same government of Ukraine who is bombing his own cities that are close to the territory of Russia, like Kharkiv and Chernigiv. All this is a terrible lie! Our president, who has been a very famous comic actor, is a Russian-speaking Jew. More than 50 percent of Ukrainians in the entire territory of the country, including in the capital Kyiv, speak Russian, not Ukrainian.”
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He added that since the Russian Empire occupied Ukraine in the 18th century, the Ukrainian language has been very restricted and in certain periods banned, so everyone speaks Russian.
“Furthermore, since we have close ties with Russia, for centuries we are very mixed with them, there are few Ukrainians who could say that they do not have Russian blood in their veins. My own family is Russian-speaking, we never had any problems. In Crimea there was only one Ukrainian-language newspaper and only three secondary schools.”
The analyst also associated with the Center for Global Studies “Strategy XXI” (Kyiv, Ukraine) commented that Russia is attacking Ukraine because Russia’s current foreign doctrine assumes the recovery of the Russian Empire within the framework of the Soviet empire and the construction of the “World Russian” – “Pax Russica”.
Russia’s ultimate goal
He stated that Russia’s ultimate goal is to change the world order in its favor.
“The Soviet empire included all the Soviet republics and the socialist countries of Europe, which are now members of the European Union. For all of them, except Russia, it has always been a real “prison”, they have been colonies of Russia that exploited, annihilated and assimilated its population. In turn, the concept of the “Russian World” encompasses not only all ex-Soviet Slavic countries, but all countries where there are people who speak Russian: this makes it possible for Russia to intervene to protect its “compatriots”. In the words of Putin himself, he told them in 2016 during an award ceremony for school students:
“Russia It has no borders.”
He added that the occupation of the territory of Ukraine completely is not Russia’s ultimate goal.
“All the countries of Europe are in danger. Russia considers the European Union and especially NATO the main obstacles to the achievement of its objectives. It is making repeated demands on NATO to cancel the membership of ex-Soviet and ex-socialist countries and transfer its troops from them. At the same time it is threatening neighboring countries like Finland and Sweden: that it will take military measures if they try to join NATO, and Germany that it will intervene again in this country to fight fascism.”
He explained that for this reason the first countries to support Ukraine It has been the former Soviets and former socialists who have already suffered greatly from the domination of Russia in imperial and Soviet times, both of which are now not dominated by Russia.
“In the first place are the Baltic countries (Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia) and Poland. Of the non-Soviet European countries, Great Britain was the first to raise its voice in support of Ukraine because it has been affected in recent years by terrorist actions on its own territory, carried out by intelligence services of Russia and for Russia’s intervention in its internal affairs that damaged it. Other European countries and the United States, which is its largest partner in the NATO framework, have joined Ukraine’s support group after Russia began to openly threaten Ukraine and make demands on NATO.”
large scale war
He added that all European countries have joined because they perceive the form that the conflict took, a large-scale war with threats of Russia to use nuclear weapons and attempts to destroy nuclear power plants, as very threatening and dangerous to the security of all of them, at least, and most likely the entire Eurasian continent.
“There is really a concern that Russia can use nuclear weapons in this region that it accuses of Nazism against Russians.”
In clear Spanish, he stressed that they are afraid that Russia will use nuclear weapons, prohibited by international agreements, because it has already done so once, and now Russian forces have taken the Zaporizhia plant.
“We have experimented with another Chernobyl plant that was closed a long time ago because a missile fell there, and the radiation started to spread. We still don’t know what happened to the people who were working with that team at this nuclear plant. A nuclear plant does not need to explode to cause damage, it is enough to neglect some of its processes. We are very scared about that. Yes it’s correct.”
missiles over dams
He added that days ago the Ukrainian army shot down Russian missiles that were flying over the dams. They were going to destroy the Dnieper River dam in the capital Kiev, and this could lead to the flooding of the entire country.”
“We know that there are more than 9,000 Russians killed in Ukraine, and Russia he doesn’t want to admit it. What our government has done is a call to the Red Cross to bring the corpses of the Russians to Russia, officially”
He stressed that Russia had said that in three days it would occupy Ukraine complete and that people were going to find him with flowers. “But it is happening that our people have come together to fight Russia and counteract its occupation of the territory. Russia is showing quite a lot of anger and we know that they are crazy for victories, they cannot leave it at that, they cannot give up and since they have already lost this war strategically, they can use nuclear weapons.”
He said that it is said that Russia is a powerful country, a superpower, but it is not true, because if you compare its gross domestic product with other powerful countries, including European ones, Russia’s gross domestic product is like a couple of countries in the European Union not even of the entire European Union, and if you divide Russia into subpopulation, you can see that it is smaller than some Latin American countries, even smaller than Mexico.
“We know that Russia cannot lead a large-scale war for a long time, what we understand is that if it were to occupy Ukraine it would not be able to maintain its control because there would be a terrible insurgency war because people are countering.”
“But about 80,000 people have returned to Ukraine to help fight, mostly men who worked in other countries. Many people do not want to leave because we do not want to leave our land to Russia, because we know that we already had very hard historical moments with Russia.”
He reported that at the moment, according to official data, 28 children have died and there are 840 injured children, of which 64 are very serious.
tense atmosphere
Olexandra Kovalyóva was in Vyshneve, near Kyiv, about 4 kilometers from its border, when she woke up at 5 a.m. on February 24 to hear loud explosions nearby, and after two days, in the car of friends from his family went to Lviv, a place that is considered safer at the moment.
“We are very nervous, people are very scared, we cannot sleep. I am sleeping three or four hours a night. We are in a terrible war. The day before yesterday we had four attacks in the day, we don’t know what it was because the attack alarm sounded and we had to hide.” He expressed that they were not prepared with the shelters.
“We have a ten-liter bottle of water for 20 or 30 people, we were not prepared, we did not have the shelters prepared. This house has good walls, there are people who are hiding in modern houses and they are not for that, it can even be more dangerous for people, they are asked to hide in the corridors of the buildings because there in those basements they are like a trap for people if something happens with the building, we would not be able to get them out.”
He explained that in Ukraine after independence shelters were never built.
“There were shelters left from Soviet times, but they were abandoned, and people are hiding in basements of buildings, and they are very cold places, people cannot stay in these places for long.”
regretted that Russia has been bombing train stations where they knew women and children were hiding.
He also said that there are communication problems in different regions because Russia is exploiting communication antennas and in other territories there is no electricity because they are also destroying power plants.
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He added that food shortages have not occurred, but prices have risen a lot in supermarkets.
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