A top Russian diplomat insists that his country will not occupy Ukraine.
“The goal is very clear: Denazification and demilitarization,” Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s ambassador in Geneva, said of the invasion — which he called a “special military operation.”
“We are not going to stay in Ukraine militarily. We are not going to occupy this country,” he told the UN Geneva press association ACANU. “I don’t know all the details of the military plan, but the political goal is as I described it.”
He said the definition of “demilitarization” was being discussed in diplomatic talks between Ukrainian and Russian envoys.
“We want to secure — or to have guarantees — that the threat is not coming from Ukraine against the Russian Federation.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to legitimize Russia’s moves in Ukraine by claiming a desire to “denazify” Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust and who heads a Western-backed, democratically elected government.
Historians see Putin’s invocation of World War II as disinformation and a cynical ploy to further the Russian leader’s aims.
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