Kuleba: Some of Ukraine's friends still do not view Putin as evil that must be eliminated

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said this in an interview with Foreign Affairs, Ukrinform reports.

He noted that Ukraine and its partners have two conceptual problems, and the first of them is the fact that not even all of Ukraine's friends see Putin as an evil.

"They still consider him as a man, as a leader who made a grave mistake that he has to pay for, but not as an evil that must be eliminated as a political concept or as a way to handle international affairs. If you consider him as a leader who made a grave mistake, you come up with one strategy and one line of treatment. But if you consider him as an evil that should cease to exist in global affairs [...] then, of course, this is a different strategy," Kuleba said.

According to him, this is how some friends view Putin, despite all the lessons that he has taught them over the last 20 years of his rule and Ukraine's numerous unsuccessful attempts to make a deal with him, reset relations with him or appease him.

The minister said the second conceptual issue was the line "Russia must not win this war."

"We've been saying from day one that the right way to put it is that 'Ukraine must win this war,' because 'Ukraine must win this war' and 'Russia must not win this war' are two different strategies," Kuleba said.

He added that these are two conceptual foundations of the shortcomings in the current policymaking. The minister refused to say that everything was wrong and called the actions of the West since February 2022 outstanding and remarkable, but, in his opinion, much more could have been done if these two concepts had not stood in the way of victory.

Photo: Ukrainian Foreign Ministry