British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, mocking his leadership and failures in Ukraine.
Truss, who urged other G7 foreign ministers on Thursday to commit to fresh waves of sanctions against Russia, said that Putin was “humiliating himself on the world stage.”
The British foreign secretary used a meeting with G7 ministers to call for all existing restrictions against Russia to remain in place until a peace agreement is made and to request additional financial assistance to help Ukraine rebuild its cities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy echoed Truss’s comments during his Thursday night address, describing Russia’s failure to take control of Kyiv and other parts of central Ukraine as a “defeat.”
“Russia’s strategic defeat is already obvious to everyone in the world. It simply lacks the courage to admit it,” he said. “Instead, they are trying to hide the truth behind missile, air and artillery strikes.
G7 Meeting Paves Way for More Ukraine Assistance
Meeting with other diplomats from the Group of Seven nations in Germany, a summit expected to take three days, Truss and her colleagues continue to discuss ways to help Ukraine win the war against Russia while also reducing the effects of the war felt across the world.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that the war in Ukraine has become a “global crisis,” with shipments of crops stuck in Ukraine because of the conflict.
“Twenty-five million tons of grain are currently blocked in Ukrainian ports, particularly Odesa,” Baerbock said.
“Grain that’s food for millions of people around the world, and which is needed particularly urgently in African countries and the Middle East.”
The German foreign minister said that during the meeting, diplomats discussed how to unlock the grain blockade exerted by Russia, and how to distribute grain to the rest of the world amid the conflict.
Macron Warns Against “Humiliating” Putin
French President Emmanuel Macron warned earlier this week against humiliating either side of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, stating that Europe should learn from the past. Macron warned that NATO countries should not seek to humiliate Putin or Russia in the same way Germany was humiliated at the end of World War I.
“We will have a peace to build tomorrow, let us never forget that,” Macron said. “We will have to do this with Ukraine and Russia around the table. The end of the discussion and the negotiation will be set by Ukraine and Russia. But it will not be done in denial, nor in exclusion of each other, nor even in humiliation.”
Macron insisted that Europe is “not at war with Russia.” His tone was also notably different from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who recently said that America’s aim is to ensure that Russia is weakened and left unable to recover.
A view shows fire on Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, Ukraine, in this screengrab taken from a drone video obtained by Reuters on May 8, 2022. Ukrainian Ground Forces/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT
Russia’s inability to take Kyiv and its continued struggle to take full control over the eastern Donbas region, however, may ultimately lead to humiliation whether the West intends it or not.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
