Russia seeks to freeze Ukraine war, says Polish president
Russia is trying "at all costs" to freeze the war in Ukraine, to halt the Ukrainian offensive and to stop the West's military aid, Poland's president said on Thursday.
During a press conference following talks in Warsaw with his Montenegrin counterpart, Milo Dukanovic, Andrzej Duda commented that Russia is now on the defensive and said that sanctions imposed on Moscow had been successful in preventing Russia from producing modern weapons, as a result of which it was using reserve armaments from the 1960s or even earlier.
"Looking at what Russian diplomacy is doing, at the phone calls of (Foreign Minister Sergei - PAP) Lavrov to London, to Washington, to Paris, to Berlin, I can say in short: Russia is trying at all costs to freeze this conflict, to halt the Ukrainian offensive...," Duda said. "To stop the military aid of the West, of the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance, because it is in fact losing the war, because it is being expelled from occupied territories."
"Russia is retreating, Russia is in no state to resist Ukrainian bravery, the determination of Ukrainian soldiers supported with military aid from the West," the president said, adding that because of this, Moscow was trying to use diplomatic means coupled with nuclear threats, including damage to nuclear power plants and the use of "dirty bombs."
According to the Polish president, since Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine, the war could be divided into stages, the latest of which was Ukraine's counter-offensive in the east.
"The Ukrainians have a huge chance today, thanks to their bravery, to retake Kherson (a city in southern Ukraine – PAP)," Duda said. "That has an absolutely strategic significance for the further course of the conflict and for taking Ukraine back from the occupiers' hands, from Russian hands."
