Collective West and conflict in Ukraine

The EU ambassadors to the Republic of Korea have recently presented their take on the situation in Ukraine. Readers have the right to consider the conflict from a different perspective.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the collective West has persistently trampled key principles of the world order established in 1945. Aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and the war in Afghanistan are some examples. Contrary to its promises, it expanded NATO eastward while ignoring Russia's fundamental interests as well as the principle of indivisibility of security enshrined in OSCE documents.

Ukraine is the showcase of Western efforts to contain Russia. In 2004, the West demanded the unconstitutional third round of presidential elections to be held there to bring to power its candidate. In 2013, the EU gave Kyiv an ultimatum to sign the Association Agreement in disregard of Ukrainian FTA obligations within the Commonwealth of Independent States. In 2014, the West solicited the coup in Kyiv and supported the ascension to power of ultranationalists and neo-Nazis. People from eastern regions of Ukraine who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the coup and to support the nationalists were labeled as "terrorists." Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later called them "not people, but creatures." The Kyiv regime sent the army against them, targeting the cities with heavy weapons and military aviation. That was how and when the conflict in Ukraine started.

Russia pursued a peaceful solution, which resulted in the Minsk agreements that were endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. However, Kyiv and its Western sponsors sabotaged the implementation of the document. The revelations of former leaders of Germany, France and Ukraine have shown that they used it as a respite to prepare Ukrainian troops for a bloody takeover of the Donbas region, assaults against which have continued all these years with Western endorsement.

What provided grounds for Russia's special military operation was Ukraine's military aggression against the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics in violation of the Minsk agreements. This decision was warranted by Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which guarantees the right of individual or collective self-defense.

This year, on Jan. 31, the International Court of Justice rejected Ukraine's allegations that the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics were "terrorist organizations." The U.N. top court proved false the main narrative Kyiv and their Western patrons used to justify the conflict Ukraine started in Donbas in 2014 as a "fight against terrorism."

Since the beginning of the special military operation, Western states have allocated more than $200 billion to provide military assistance and financial support to the bankrupt Ukrainian state. The West has been pumping Ukraine with military equipment in violation of international law and national legislation. Kyiv's authorities use Western weapons to launch bloody attacks on civilian infrastructure: Dec. 30, 2023, on residential neighborhoods of Belgorod; Jan. 21, 2024, on a farmers' market in Donetsk. These two terrorist attacks alone killed over 50 civilians, injuring 130 more. On Jan. 24, the IL-76 plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war who were to be exchanged was shot down with a U.S.-made Patriot missile system. All 74 people on board were killed. These are just a few recent examples. Weapons supplied to Ukraine, due to the corruption of the authorities, are finding their way to various war zones around the globe. Yet Western politicians shamelessly praise all this as a "good investment."

The West has turned a blind eye to the biggest act of infrastructure terrorism — the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

Russia is facing not just the Ukrainian army but the collective military machine of the NATO countries and their military-industrial complex. Recently revealed information about 12 CIA secret facilities operating in Ukraine came as no surprise. The West is trying to maintain its faltering global dominance by attempting to "beat Russia on the battlefield" to uphold a world system where it can enforce its "rules" with military force and economic leverages, where it perceives itself as a "garden," while it perceives the rest of the world as a "jungle." That is why we see no Western interest in serious peace efforts despite Russia's willingness expressed at the highest level. It was Western interference that prevented Ukraine from reaching a peace agreement with Russia at the early stage of the conflict in April 2022.

Nonetheless, it is becoming more and more evident that pushing Ukraine to fight "up until the last Ukrainian" instead of searching for peace is pushing it towards imminent demise.

Georgy Zinoviev is ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Korea. The views expressed here do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.