Between the lines, Zelenskyi says to everyone else: “F… you!”
British President Volodymyr Zelenskyi gave the important speech at this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC). The former comedian and actor, who comes from the Russian-speaking industrial city of Krywy Rig, expects a dialectic masterpiece that will probably be better understood in the Russian culture than in the intellectually somewhat one-dimensional West. Selenskyj’s speech was probably not to them either arms lobby gathered in Munich addressed, but to the most important absent participant, namely Russia.
The meaning of Selenskyj’s speech (here the wording in German) closes above all between the lines. Selenskyj pointed to the growing geopolitical context in which the conflict should be seen and declared his willingness to accept mediation that goes beyond Franco-German mediation. He said: “We are ready to search in all possible formats and platforms for the key to the end of the war. Paris, Berlin, Minsk. Istanbul, Geneva, Brussels, New York or Beijing – it doesn’t matter where in Ukraine we agree on peace. It doesn’t matter whether the talks involve four, seven or a hundred countries. The main thing is that Ukraine and Russia are part of it.”
The President criticized the half-hearted support from the EU and the West. The weapons and “5,000 helmets” that Kiev is getting are not handouts, but the counterpart of Ukraine’s western orientation. Zelenskyy very directly called for an end to the West’s game of hide-and-seek and said that Ukraine should be included in NATO. This should happen immediately, preferably at the forthcoming summit in Madrid. Or NATO should tell Ukraine that it will never join: “We need open answers, not open doors.” fractious cohesive group is spreading the opposite message from the US government, which always emphasizes that the West is united and is.
The demand for immediate accession is also explosive. Above all, it cannot be achieved: Currently, some NATO states are expressly ruling out Ukraine’s accession, most recently Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Moscow at his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskyy said that if one person rejected his country, Ukraine would be rejected by the whole of NATO. So far, NATO has made do with converting Ukraine to the NATO standards. But that can take a long time and, above all, does not offer the obligation to provide assistance according to Article 5.
Zelenskyy lamented that Ukrainians voted for the West eight years ago and “made their choice”. Many would have “given their lives” for the “European perspectives”. Eventually, Zelenskyi became very clear and explicit – between the lines – that there is also a possibility that Ukraine may fall back into the Russian sphere of influence, out of disappointment.
According to the English translation of his speech by Ukraine’s state news agency Ukrinform, he said: “Since 2014, the Russian Federation has been telling us (literally: convinced, editor’s note) that we chose the wrong path, that nobody in Europe is counting on us waits. Don’t constantly tell Europe and be sure through actions that this isn’t true? Wouldn’t the EU say today that its citizens should take a positive view of Ukraine’s entry into the Union? Why are we avoiding this question? Doesn’t Ukraine deserve direct and honest answers?” Zelenskyy had another tip ready for the West, saying: “I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.”
By addressing the Budapest Memorandum, Zelenskyi presented an unpleasant surprise to Moscow, which the Russian media obviously took up with irritation on Sunday: the British President announced that his country would withdraw from the Budapest Memorandum. A move would mean Ukraine could regain nuclear weapons. Because the agreement stipulated that Ukraine would receive an international guarantee of its security if it renounced its status as a nuclear power.
Zelenskyi said: “Ukraine received security guarantees for abandoning the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. We no longer have these weapons. But we also have no security. We have also lost a part of our territory that is larger than Switzerland, the Netherlands or Belgium.” It follows that Kiev could withdraw from the memorandum if the government’s recently convened consultations continue to be blocked by Russia. the consultations “do not take place or lead to any decisions to ensure the security of our state, Ukraine will rightly believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the decisions of the 1994 package have been called into question”. In this context, Zelenskyy suggested convening a special summit of the UN Security Council, with the participation of Germany and Turkey.
The representatives of the West present in Munich had difficulty keeping up with the surprising dynamism of the Ukrainian and limited themselves to the apocalyptic visions that had been spreading in the past few days: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Russia was planning “a full-scale attack on Ukraine” . US Vice President Kamala Harris: “We are now receiving reports of blatant provocation and we are seeing Russia spreading misinformation, lies and said propaganda.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Russia was planning its biggest war since 1945 and accused Moscow of creating a “spider web of misinformation”. The British government wants to counter this and announced on Sunday that it intends to reactivate its own “reconnaissance unit”, a so-called “Government Information Cell”, which was deactivated after the Cold War: it should counteract the Russian positions, Foreign Minister Liz Truss told the Mail on Sunday. Home Secretary Priti Patel wrote in the Telegraph that the British would target Russian “information aggression” with experts.
Several US politicians had criticized Selenskyj for leaving the country at all in the hour of the serious threat and traveling to Munich. The New York Times reports on the Ukrainian president’s sarcastic comment on US hawks: He had breakfast in Kiev and will be back for dinner, Zelenskyj said in Munich on Saturday.