"Way to stop this is to unite", Ukraine FM demands global unity amid war

|HT|

Ukraine's "heroic people" are giving a "simple message to the world" - "Russians go home. You're on a foreign land where no one needs you and no one welcomes you with flowers. Putin, leave Ukraine alone", foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a televised address on Sunday. Russia "will not win this war.. and it's time to save Russians and end this bloodbath," he said in a powerful speech with the Kremlin's offensive entering the eleventh day. "We need to step up pressure on Russia in order to prevail... to prevail not only for Ukraine security but also the European order as we know it," he said. Kuleba on Saturday met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and secretary general of NATO Jens Stoltenberg among others at the foreign council of the European Union. He said he outlined the "next steps" that Kyiv has demanded against Russia. "We demand banning Russian banks from SWIFT, closing European ports for Russian ships, closing access to Russia to cryptocurrency, and stopping purchase of Russian oil. Russian oil smells with Ukrainian blood today. Buying it is financing Russian war crimes. You can't a buy a little bit of it and be complacent with a little bit of those war crimes. It's an 'either or' moment."

"On the parallel track, we see a mass exodus of multinational companies from the Russian market. There are already 113 companies that have stopped working in Russia or with Russia. I commend their decision. I call on all companies to stop their trade with Russia and Russian partners. Stop investment. Every dollar or Euro earned with business from Russia today is soaked in the blood of Ukrainian men and women." "We also made it clear that Ukraine needs protection of its skies. First and foremost, there's a need to stop indiscrimate bombardment, which leads to civilian casualties. This includes our demand to close the skies over Ukraine and also the need to provide ukraine with combat aircraft and serious air defence and missile defence weapons."

"My message to the world is clear. When all European leaders and other leaders all through the year repeat those words - 'Never again', they now need to prove with action that they stand by those words. Because what they're seeing now in Ukrainian citizen towns was 80 years ago when Nazis bombed European capitals. "Never again?" proove it."

"Prove that you've learnt from the lessons from the past. That the brutal force can be stopped before it drives the whole continent to a devastating conflict. The way to stop is to unite." Shelling continues in several major cities raising concerns over safety of tens of thousands of civilians.

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