The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said on Friday 5 May that if Ukraine loses the war, it could become a second Belarus.
“The war cannot simply end because Ukraine is unable to defend itself and must surrender. Russian troops will be at the Polish borders. Ukraine will become a second Belarus. Do you want this kind of end to the war? No”, he stressed during a debate at the State of the Union in Florence.
Borrell called on all leaders who say they want peace to push Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, explaining that his message to Vladimir Putin was “stop the war, stop the bombing and withdraw his troops from Ukraine”. “I know he won’t”, he lamented.
Earlier in the day, in a statement, the spokesperson for the European External Action Service denounced a new escalation of violence this week in Ukraine, with “increasingly indiscriminate and bloody shelling of civilian areas”. “Missile and drone strikes have again targeted Odessa and the capital, Kyiv”, he condemned, adding that this was in addition to indiscriminate Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure in the Kherson region using heavy artillery, including a large supermarket, a railway station and a petrol station, killing at least 20 people and injuring nearly 50.
“This reckless killing of civilians and destruction of civilian infrastructure must stop immediately”, the spokesperson said. In his view, indiscriminate Russian attacks on civilian facilities constitute war crimes for which those responsible will be held accountable. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)