Speaking in an interview with business and financial news broadcaster CNBC, President Andrzej Duda said that the Russian leader "is behaving like a tyrant and colonialist by invading Ukraine."
“Vladimir Putin wants to enslave Ukraine," Duda said. "He wants to expand his regime across the Ukrainian territory, to take away Ukrainians’ freedom. Why? Because Ukrainians decided they want to be part of the community of free nations. They want to be part of the European Union, they want to be part of NATO."
Duda told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick in an interview that Russia’s invasion of its neighbour last February was spurred on by Ukraine and other former Soviet republics moving away “from the old Soviet sphere of influence towards free, democratic countries,” according to the cnbc.com website.
Duda also said in the interview that the West had to ask itself, “do we allow countries to be enslaved by tyrants like Putin who deny all democratic rules, who want to introduce terror, who try to enslave others and take advantage of their own potential for their own benefit? Or do we think that the free world can progress and every country has the right to self-determine?”
“If that’s what we believe in, we have to defend Ukraine,” the Polish president told CNBC.
He added, as quoted by CNBC: “Russia is basically behaving like a colonial country. It wants to colonize others, take away their freedoms, exploit their resources. It wants to juice other people’s potential, their economic potential, their natural resources. Today, that’s what’s happening in Ukraine. It would be the same for other countries."
Duda made the comments during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, CNBC reported.
The broadcaster described the Polish president as one of Putin’s fiercest critics and Ukraine’s most vocal allies.
Wednesday is day 329 of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
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Source: PAP, cnbc.com