“He did not want to listen to our warnings,” US President Joe Biden directed a soft and mild criticism to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who, since the outbreak of the conflict with Russia, has not stopped appealing to the West, especially the United States, to provide him with weapons.
Biden stressed during a reception in Los Angeles to raise funds for the Democratic Party, Friday evening, that his Ukrainian counterpart "did not want to hear Washington's warnings," as he put it.
“People thought I was exaggerating...A lot of people thought I was exaggerating when I talked about a Russian operation in Ukraine before it started," he said, according to AFP.
Biden's statements today come at a time when Ukraine is witnessing violent battles in the east, as Russian forces are trying to control the last Ukrainian strongholds in Luhansk, in order to impose their grip on Donbass, and open a wide land corridor between the east and the Crimea in the south.
Russia-Ukraine 4 Months of Conflict
As Russia's military operation in Ukraine has begun its fourth month, officials in Kyiv have expressed fears that the specter of "war fatigue" could undermine the West's determination to help the country fend off the Russians.
Since the beginning of Russian operations, the United States and its allies have provided Ukraine with billions of dollars in arms, and Europe has received millions of people displaced by the war.
Europe has also witnessed unprecedented unity since World War II in imposing sanctions on President Vladimir Putin and his country.
But analysts have pointed out that the Kremlin may take advantage of a long-standing and ingrained conflict and potential waning interest among Western powers, which could pressure Ukraine to reach a settlement.
It is clear that Russia is determined to tire the West and is now building its strategy on the assumption that Western countries will get tired and gradually begin to change its hard-line rhetoric to a more appropriate one.
In parallel, other observers believe that unity in Europe is declining a bit because of the Russian operation and there is a kind of fatigue among member states about finding new ways to punish Russia.
It is noteworthy that the United States and its allies continue to assist Ukraine, as Biden said last week that Washington would provide it with advanced missile systems and munitions that would enable it to strike key targets with greater accuracy on the battlefield.
Kyiv wants to drive Russia out of its newly-held areas of eastern and southern Ukraine, as well as take back Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, and parts of Donbass that have been controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists for the past eight years.
On a larger scale, the Ukrainian president announced the creation of a special military unit in which foreign soldiers will participate.
On the same day, the Ukrainian Embassy in Japan announced on its Twitter page the recruitment of Japanese volunteers to fight in Ukraine. According to a Japanese newspaper, about 70 Japanese volunteers, including 50 former members of the Self-Defense Forces, have expressed their desire to respond to the call of the Ukrainian authorities to fight in Ukraine.
The newspaper quoted these figures from a source at the Ukrainian embassy in Tokyo. This tweet was removed later. In response, Japanese Cabinet Secretary-General Hirokadzu Matsuno said that his country reprimanded the Ukrainian Embassy in Tokyo.
“We reprimanded and made clear our position on the issue of the evacuation (the evacuation of Japanese citizens from Ukrainian territory),” Matsuno said at a press conference. Matsuno did not directly confirm the fact that the issue was discussed during the reprimand, referring to this as a diplomatic issue.
As Zelensky asked Jews all over the world to “speak up and not remain silent” after Russian forces launched a strike targeting the TV tower in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
“I am addressing all the Jews of the world now, don’t you see what is happening? That is why it is so important that millions of Jews around the world should not remain silent now,” Zelensky said.
While the media manifested that the first foreign mercenaries had arrived in Ukraine to participate in hostilities on the side of the Ukrainian army.
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