In an interview on Channel 5, Petro Poroshenko told what needs to be done so that the new American administration forces putin to stop the war in Ukraine.
“I believe that now there will be a narrow window of opportunity to end the war. What do we need to do? I can imagine what Trump will do. Trump has arguments for putin. But Ukrainians must do their homework. We have no right to allow ourselves to be weak. Because if we are weak, putin has no motivation to end the war. He doesn’t care about the victims that russia pays. He doesn’t care about the money that russia loses. He is involved in the war. He has gone crazy with blood. And Ukraine must be strong to stop it,” the fifth President of Ukraine emphasized.
“Trump is a man of results, a man of action. On the one hand, this gives Ukraine a very good chance that this result will be achieved. On the other hand, this is a very narrow window of opportunity that we absolutely cannot miss,” Poroshenko said.
“I will give you an example. In the Republican majority in Congress, about a hundred Republican congressmen firmly support Ukraine. About 90 people are against us. This is the largest number, and this is a defeat in the struggle for bipartisan support, which, unfortunately, the current government has suffered. And there are a little more than 30 congressmen who are wavering, who have not decided. Now, among these, a little more than 30 Republican congressmen, the majority vote on the Ukrainian issue is being decided. And so far, we have not won a whole series of issues,” Poroshenko noted.
He, in particular, recalled President Biden’s initiative to allocate $24 billion to Ukraine, which Congress did not support. “Why? Among other things, I believe that the negotiating team should have worked differently,” Poroshenko said.
“The second position was to extend Lend-Lease for us. Lend-Lease means that we would have access to and receive everything that is in the warehouses. russia is currently advancing in several key areas. In addition to fortifications, we need minefields, and for this, we need anti-personnel mines and remote detonation installations. They are in the warehouses, there are a lot of them. And we could get this under Lend-Lease, which means making the second and third lines of defense impassable,” he noted.
In addition, Poroshenko believes that it is necessary to intensify work on sanctions against russia and the use of income from frozen assets. “Now we need to include everyone in the parliamentary dialogue. We can fight for bipartisan support; for us, this is a matter of life and death. And for this we must do our homework,” Poroshenko said.
“What is the first question the new American administration is asking? Corruption. And it’s bad news for the authorities because they know much more than the authorities imagine. The clear audit that they plan to conduct – they already know where to look and what to look for. They are primarily interested in how they worked with American taxpayers’ money. I think that the Ukrainian authorities need to prepare very carefully for the report because we risk that the country will be left with a significantly lower level of military, defense, and financial support,” Poroshenko summarizes.