Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar also said his country had been “emphatic in condemning the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but I think it has now gone further,” he added.
Elsewhere, countries such as China (which in March published a 12-point peace proposal aimed at ending the war that the United States and its allies dismissed as too favorable to Russia) and India have taken a more neutral stance, while they have intensified their purchases. of Russian energy trading at a discount on world markets as Western countries buy less.
“I call them the teetotalers,” said Karin von Hippel, director general of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-based think tank. “Countries that are playing both sides, supporting Ukraine while making energy deals with Russia.”
After putting Russia’s economy on a war footing, Putin has increased production of military equipment and organized weapons supplies and other support from Iran and North Korea.
Without funding from the United States and its Western allies, Ukraine’s ability to fight in the long term is uncertain.
“A Russian conquest of all of Ukraine is by no means impossible if the United States cuts off all military assistance and Europe does the same,” the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Moscow, said in a report last month. in Washington: “The high price of losing Ukraine.”
“Such an outcome would bring a defeated but triumphant Russian military to NATO’s border, from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean,” he said, adding that Russia could “pose a major conventional military threat to NATO for the first time since the decade.” 1990″. .”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously vowed that Ukraine will “reclaim its territory and its people,” including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and the eastern Donbas region, where its forces began fighting Moscow-backed separatists that same year. The Kremlin annexed the region last year.
Any negotiations could prove politically difficult for the once feted world leader, whose country has attracted much less public attention since war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October.
Speaking to reporters in Davos, Zelenskyy warned that cutting funding would be “a terrible and terrifying experiment” with Russia. “I wouldn’t recommend any experiments with this,” he said.
Although he said that “Ukraine will work with whoever is elected” in the United States, he added that “radical voices really scare society in Ukraine” and noted that these voices formed a “significant part” of the Republican Party, including Trump.
Perhaps their best hope would be for Biden to win a second term. Also speaking in Davos, Biden campaign co-chairman Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, said: “We’re not going to say, ‘Zelenskyy, you need to negotiate.’ We are committed to the security and sovereignty of Ukraine. “We will support Ukraine to retain the territory it has and advance where it can.”
For RUSI’s von Hippel, “the US stance remains a decisive factor.” If there were an agreement, “it would have to include security guarantees,” he said.
“This will be a great year for Ukraine,” he added.