Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that Western countries could have prevented a full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation by imposing sanctions and providing Kyiv with enough necessary weapons. He stated this in an article for The Wall Street Journal.
Reznikov recalled that in 2014 Russia attacked Ukraine, and the world decided not to interfere, and now "Russian bombs are erasing our cities from the ground, and the world could not stop them."
"All this could have been prevented. If the West had imposed preventive sanctions against Russia and provided Kyiv with a sufficient number of defensive weapons, primarily air defense and missile defense systems, tens of thousands of Ukrainians would be alive today," the minister said.
Reznikov also noted that the reaction of Western countries to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was too slow.
"As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, the global response to a crisis of this kind must be immediate, within 24 hours, not weeks or months," the minister added.
As Ukrainian News Agency reported, Podoliak spoke about Russia's threats to launch "the second phase” of a special operation.
Experts believe that the offensive of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine is unlikely to be more successful than previous ones, but the Russian forces may wear down the Ukrainian defenders or achieve limited success.
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