Russia has launched a massive series of missile attacks across Ukraine today, with reports of explosions and fresh power outages in cities including Lviv, Kyiv and Odessa. The attacks come after Ukrainian officials called on residents to evacuate the city of Kherson amidst heavy Russian artillery strikes. On Wednesday, two explosions rattled a maternity hospital in Kherson, where at least five people were recovering from childbirth.
On Wednesday, the Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky gave his annual address to the Ukrainian parliament, where he again pressed for Ukraine to join the European Union. Zelensky has been pushing a 10-point peace plan, while Russian President Vladimir Putin says he’s prepared to end the war in Ukraine, saying he’ll negotiate with everyone involved in this process about acceptable solutions. Are negotiations likely?
What’s happening in Ukraine, this systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure by the Russian side, is a war crime. I mean, human rights organizations have clearly stated that from the beginning. It started two months. It’s been already two months of systematic destruction, systematic bombing of the civilian infrastructure. So, this is horrifying, of course, and it must be very, very strongly condemned — no less than the condemnation of the U.S. destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, its civilian infrastructure, in 1991. I mean, we have to be consistent. If we have denounced and condemned what happened in Iraq, we have to denounce and condemn what is happening today in Ukraine.
Now, about — the statements about negotiations are, I think, today, more propaganda devices than the — than real, I mean. That’s because if you see what conditions they are
— source democracynow.org | Dec 29, 2022