During recent remarks before the United Nations, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N. Sergiy Kyslytsya compared Russia’s Vladimir Putin to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler amid Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians, although exact casualty numbers at this point in time are uncertain. The Russian assault on Ukraine has included offensives against major cities like the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and civilians have continued to sustain sobering impacts from the Russian onslaught. On Tuesday, “At least 11 people were killed and 35 wounded in the rocket strikes on Kharkiv, Interior Ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said,” as summarized in USA Today, and those figures are in addition to previous totals from that city in particular. The “Ukrainian military said Monday that dozens of civilians were killed and hundreds wounded when Russian forces began firing indiscriminately at civilian areas in Kharkiv,” Axios reported.
BREAKING-U.S. assesses that morale is flagging in some Russian units, and that some Russian units have surrendered without a fight in Ukraine, a senior US defense official says
— Phil Stewart (@phildstewart) March 1, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has characterized Russian authorities as guilty of war crimes. At the United Nations, Kyslytsya commented as follows regarding the conflict:
‘Everyone in this hall and everyone in the world knows that Russia and Russia alone started this invasion, now facilitated by Belarus. This war was not provoked. It was chosen by someone who is right now sitting in the bunker. We know what happened with the person who sat in the bunker in Berlin in May 1945.’
#Breaking: Statement of Andriy Yermak, Chairman of the Presidential Office:
"Russia has launched a missile attack on the territory where the Babyn Yar memorial complex is located. These villains are killing Holocaust victims for the second time."
— Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) March 1, 2022
After recapping certain details related to the scope of the invasion so far, Kyslytsya again brought up the comparison to the Nazi regime, asking: “Does this remind you of something, doesn’t it? Indeed. Very clear parallels could be drawn with the beginning of the Second World War. And the Russians’ course of action is very similar to what their spiritual mentors from the Third Reich employed on the Ukrainian land 80 years ago.” Kyslytsya then spotlighted devastating impacts on civilians in Ukraine that have been inflicted by Russian invaders. Then, he eventually got to Putin’s recent decision to put Russia’s nuclear forces on alert, exclaiming:
‘What madness! If [Putin] wants to kill himself, he doesn’t need to use the nuclear arsenal– he has to do what the guy in Berlin did in the bunker in May 1945.’
Check out Kyslytsya’s remarks below:
Talks between Russian and Ukrainian teams about potentially ending the war took place on Monday, although there’s been no apparent public sign that those negotiations have gotten anywhere. Going into the gatherings, Zelenskyy — who did not directly participate — wasn’t hopeful, but he nevertheless said to “let them try, so that no citizen of Ukraine doubts that I, as president, tried to stop the war when there was still a chance, however small.” The number of Ukrainians who have been displaced from the war, fleeing into nearby countries as refugees, has hit 677,000, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, and that number appeared set to continue dramatically rising.
The number of people who have fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries has reached 677,000.
The @UN humanitarian agencies and their NGO partners have launched an appeal to donors for $ 1.7 billion to support affected people inside Ukraine, and refugees from Ukraine in the region.
— Filippo Grandi (@FilippoGrandi) March 1, 2022
