President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has proposed a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at averting an invasion by Russia of his country.
President said Ukraine deserves stronger international support for the important role it plays for Europe’s security.
For eight years, Ukraine has been a shield,” Zelenskyy told a security conference in the German city of Munich on Saturday.
“I do not know what the Russian president wants. For this reason, I propose that we meet,” Zelenskyy told an international security forum in Munich.
Western powers should drop their policy of “appeasement” toward Moscow, he added. “We have no weapons and no security … but we have a right – a right to demand a shift from a policy of appeasement to one ensuring security and peace.”
President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, supervised major military drills involving Russia’s nuclear forces.
Al Jazeera’s Diplomatic Editor James Bays, reporting from Munich, has said that the NATO member states speak in one voice on their support for Ukraine against the Russian threat.
“The unity of NATO is the strongest today in recent years,” he said, adding that the real test will be NATO’s unified action in case of a future Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bays said that President Zelenskyy’s presence in Munich on Saturday despite US warnings of security risks is an act of defiance to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“His message in Munich was, ‘I’m not scared, my people are not scared’,” Bays also said.
Complying with Russian demands is not the way to achieve peace in Europe, the Polish prime minister has said, amid rising tension surrounding the situation in Ukraine.
“It is naive to believe that fulfilling some of the demands of Russia will lead to peaceful cohabitation, peaceful coexistence,” Mateusz Morawiecki said at the Munich Security Conference. / Argumentum.al
