On September 7, 2022, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba held a press conference for 10 Central Asian journalists, including myself. This is the statement he made before answering journalists’ questions. I am printing the transcript of his speech as it is, without cuts.
Dmytro Ivanovych Kuleba:
Many citizens of your countries know Ukrainians, have visited our country, studied at our institutes and universities, vacationed in Truskavets, other Ukrainian resorts, in Crimea, communicated with Ukrainian engineers, and together implemented large and serious infrastructure projects.
Unfortunately, today Russian bombs and missiles are falling on our universities and tourist facilities.
By attacking Ukraine, Russia committed the gravest crime — the crime of aggression. I think you will agree that nothing can justify the killing of 382 children who died from Russian weapons in this war. This is how many children we have lost since February 24. This does not include thousands of Ukrainian newborns, infants, whom Russia has taken to its territory and forcibly distributes to Russian families so that Ukrainian children grow up as Russians.
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have already registered more than 32,000 cases of crimes committed by Russian troops, Russian soldiers during the aggression, and these figures, to my greatest regret, continue to grow.
I will not hide it, Ukraine is having a very hard time now, but the main thing is that we withstood the first and most terrible blow. A blow from which, by all calculations, including those of our partners, Ukraine was supposed to perish. But Ukraine stood firm. Putin failed and, I assure you, will never succeed in crushing Ukraine now, no matter what fantasies he entertains.
You may ask why. Because the entire Ukrainian people rose up to fight the invaders. And no one in history has ever won a war against a people. Instead of fleeing from Russian tanks, Ukrainians lined up at military enlistment offices, our army has grown more than fivefold since the beginning of the full-scale war. We have already managed to drive the occupiers out of the north of the country. We continue to drive them from our land in other directions as well, primarily in the south and in the east. No one says it will be easy. Every step is taken with great difficulty. But we will go this path.
A few words about negotiations and peace. I want to emphasize that Ukraine never wanted war. We never planned to attack anyone, whatever is being said on Russian television. All of this is shameless lies by which Russian propaganda tries to justify the aggression against Ukraine.
And most importantly — why would we attack anyone? We have never needed anyone else’s land or anyone else’s resources. We have everything we need. And we will never, I repeat, never give our land to the invaders and will never forgive the killings, rapes, looting, torture, and other terrible crimes that the Russian army has brought to Ukrainian soil.
I urge you to treat information from Russian sources critically. Today Russia uses propaganda to conceal its operations in order to evade responsibility for its crimes. But anyone who closes their eyes to the Kremlin’s aggressive policy today or finds some justification for it is, in fact, inviting Russia into their own home (emphasis by Yep.uz).
I am convinced that despite all the trials, Ukraine will stand and win. And I want to assure you once again that Ukraine has always been committed to developing friendly relations with the states of Central Asia. When I became minister, we began working on organizing my tour specifically to the countries of Central Asia.
Before that, I had only been to Kazakhstan, and in a personal capacity. I have the warmest impressions of Kazakhstan. I have always dreamed of visiting Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and enjoying your culture, your cuisine as well. And through my tour, I wanted to give a new positive dynamic to relations.
Then the war began. I sincerely hope that after the war we will be able to implement all this, restore contacts to their previous level, rebuild communication between people, education, exchanges, infrastructure projects, and trade. That is, everything that normal countries do in peacetime to help each other and develop together on the basis of mutual respect and national interests. All this will certainly happen, but first we must win. That is exactly what we are working on now.
I do not want to take more of our time, we have already started with a slight delay due to my fault. I apologize. So let us move straight to the Q&A part. I am listening. I will answer sincerely, so if you choose to quote — quote in full so that nothing is taken out of context.
This material is part of a series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4