Ukraine says western allies shouldn't fear Russia falling apart

Ukraine’s foreign minister called on the country’s allies not to fear a possible breakup of the Russian state as a consequence of the war, while defending Kyiv’s right to strike targets on Russian soil and vowing that Ukraine would never accept a peace settlement that leaves occupied lands, including Crimea, under Moscow’s control.

Though Ukraine’s Western allies are united over the goal of preventing a Ukrainian defeat, not all embrace the objective of a full-blown Ukrainian military victory, with Kyiv regaining not just the lands it lost since the February invasion but also the Crimean Peninsula and the parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions that fell under Russian rule in 2014, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Some of these allies worry that such an outcome could profoundly destabilise the nuclear-armed Russian state, potentially leading to its fragmentation and wide-scale unrest, with unpredictable consequences for the rest of the world. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on December 5 that Washington’s focus is on supporting Ukraine to take back territory seized by Russia since launching its invasion on February 24.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who expressed confidence in continuing US backing for Kyiv, said fears about preserving Russia reminded him of the so-called “Chicken Kiev” speech of 1991. Then, President George H.W. Bush in a speech to Ukrainian lawmakers warned against “suicidal nationalism”, urging Ukrainians to preserve the Soviet Union and abandon their quest for independence from Moscow.

“I’m calling on the world not to be afraid of Russia falling apart. If the wheels of history begin to turn, no human will change it,” Mr Kuleba said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Kyiv.

“Instead of thinking of how to help Russia survive and become a normal member of the international community, it’s time to accept the fact that this Russia cannot be a normal member of the international community,” he said. “I don’t think the world will fall apart if Russia falls apart. But it will be the people of Russia who will make their country fall apart, as it happened with the Russian Empire” in 1917.

Kuleba declined to discuss specific incidents but said Ukraine can’t be expected to hold back while it wages an existential war.

“We are first and foremost focused on striking targets in the occupied territories of Ukraine, on liberating our own territory. But of course, the notion that Russia can do whatever it can technically afford to do in Ukraine while Ukraine doesn’t have the same right is conceptually, morally and militarily wrong,” Mr Kuleba said.

“Ukraine should not be endlessly victimized. We are a country that is fighting on all fronts for its survival, for its territorial integrity,” he added.

“The most important thing is that no one treats Ukraine’s behaviour—as long as it complies with international laws of warfare—from the perspective that Russia can do everything it wants while Ukraine has to respect certain red lines in defending itself.”

Ukraine has pledged to the U.S. not to use American-supplied weapons to strike Russian soil. That agreement, Mr Kuleba said, doesn’t apply to Crimea, which is internationally recognized as Ukrainian territory. The U.S. has also refrained from supplying Ukraine with the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which has a range of some 200 miles, and has modified the Himars artillery systems that it has provided to Ukraine so that they couldn’t fire ATACMS missiles into Russia should Ukraine obtain them from another source.