Ukraine: parliamentary leader confirms we were right
by Francesco Dall’Aglio
Beyond the fact that he looks like Zelensky’s cosplayer (same military jacket, same t-shirt, same beard and haircut, very similar facial expressions), Davyd Arakhamia is one of those characters who in recent years have essentially gone unnoticed by opinion public. Instead, he is one of those men who, despite occupying objectively second-rate positions (the head of the Sluga Narodu parliamentary group, obviously Zelensky’s party) is a fairly important cog, and for this reason his interview yesterday, from which I actually took the photo I attach, very interesting. Arakhamia the classic Homo Tardosovieticus: Georgian family from Gagra, born in Sochi (Russia), moved to Ukraine with his family after the 1992 war in Abkhazia, “Western” education (degree from the European University of Kiev, master’s in Management from the Open University of London), founder of several information technology companies. In politics since 2014 as an advisor to the Ministry of Defense, deputy since 2019 and immediately leader of his party’s parliamentary group, member of Zelensky’s inner circle of “advisers”, although one of those whose name appears more rarely. He doesn’t like social media much, perhaps because what you write on it has the unpleasant tendency to turn up five years later and bite you in the back: both on Facebook (where his name is David Braun) and on Telegram he basically limits himself to reposts, without exceeding patriotisms. On February 28, 2022 (and here we come to yesterday’s interview) one of the members of the Ukrainian delegation who goes to Belarus for the first, fruitless negotiations (if you remember, it was that guy with a baseball cap on his head) and says also part of the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul. Where, at least at the beginning, it seemed that things were going well and (as Putin recalled a few months ago during the visit of the leaders of the African Union to Moscow) an agreement had been more or less agreed upon, so much so that on 29 March the Russian command had announced the withdrawal, first partial and then complete, of its troops from the area north of Kiev and beyond. And this is exactly what we talked about yesterday, when Arakhamia fully confirmed Putin’s version, including the reason why, in the end, no agreement was reached. I transcribe here: “In my opinion, [i russi] they believed until the end that they could push us to accept neutrality. That was the main thing for them: they were ready to end the war if we agreed to be neutral, like Finland had been, and guaranteed that we would not join NATO.” “Just that?” “Basically the main point it was this. Everything else was cosmetic and political embellishments about denazification, the Russian-speaking population and blah blah blah.” “Why didn’t Ukraine accept?” “First of all, to accept this point the Constitution had to be changed. Our path to NATO set in the Constitution. Secondly, there was and is no trust in Russia, this could only be done if there were security guarantees [nota mia: c’erano, facevano parte dei “18 punti” della bozza di accordo. Garanzie fornite dal Consiglio di Sicurezza ONU, da Germania, Turchia, Italia, Polonia e Cina]. We couldn’t sign, leave and take a deep breath, they could come back in the future and we wouldn’t be ready. So it was only possible if we were sure that it wouldn’t happen again. But we weren’t sure. Furthermore, when we returned from Istanbul Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we should not sign anything with them and we should continue to fight”. Johnson, of course, did not go to Kiev only of his own free will. After a while the HIMARS arrived and things have taken a different turn and now any negotiations, assuming they get there, will only have to take into account what has happened in the last year and a half. However, it is interesting to see how now even one of Zelensky’s closest collaborators confirms that only that Putin had not lied, but above all that the Russian objective was that, and only that, not to have NATO in Ukraine – something that was quite clear to anyone who had followed the evolution of the matter from 2007 onwards.
War and pace file
2023-11-26 05:04:06
#Observatory #legality #rights
