Russia is “weaponising” food and “blackmailing the world”, the Ukrainian ambassador to Ireland has said.
Speaking at the MacGill summer school in Donegal, Larysa Gerasko expressed her thanks to Ireland for “hosting our people” fleeing the war.
“But this war is not about Ukraine only. This war goes far beyond the territory of Ukraine. The consequences directly affect the whole of Europe and wider,” she told the audience.
She said Russia “pretends to be ready for peace talks” and yet at the same time is ramping up efforts on the battlefield. “It is still in their plans to seize as much of the Ukrainian territory as possible.
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“If Ukraine loses this war it would be a clear signal to Russia that it could carry on and further terrorise the world. We have to be aware this war is a war against democracy, and Europe. We have to be united more than ever.”
On the prospect of ending the fighting, she said: “Ukraine wants peace more than any other country. But we cannot allow Putin to consolidate his gains. This will set the stage of a new war once Russia recovers economically and regroups militarily.”
Russian drone strikes this week damaged grain silos and warehouses at the Ukrainian river port of Reni on the Danube, officials said.
Drones were used in overnight strikes on storage facilities and ports along the Danube river that Kyiv has been using for grain transport to Europe after Moscow broke off a key wartime export deal through the Black Sea.
“Since the beginning, the food security of a million people has been under serious threat,” Ms Gerasko said.
“Russia weaponises food and blackmails the world through food, and through Ukrainian grain. Russian occupiers deliberately attacked the Odesa region and seaports. Almost 220,000 tonne of grain and five civilian ships were damaged or partially destroyed in recent days.”
There are further implications as Ukraine also exports flour and oil products, the diplomat said. She also pointed towards significant ecological damage wrought by the war.
“Millions of hectares of the forest have been burned by shelling. Ukraine is one of the most mined countries in the world, with almost 174,000 square kilometres remaining dangerous, twice the territory of Ireland. Two Irelands are mined right now in Ukraine. Imagine this huge, huge tragedy.”
Ms Gerasko said that at the start of the war, most people believed it would end quickly but this has not happened.
She said more than five million Ukrainians have been internally displaced, and that six million have left since the country since the start of the war. Some 91,000 have received temporary protection in Ireland.
“Today, Russia is systematically and cynically violating international law, rights and freedoms. Russia continues to systematically shell civilians cities, kindergartens, schools and hospitals and destroy critical infrastructure.”
Investigations have been launched into more than 1,000 crimes which includes the killing of more than 500 children and the wounding of thousands of citizens, she said.
She said she recently spent three weeks in Ukraine. “No one knows whether they will wake up in bed in the morning or lying under the rubble of their home. People in Ukraine live under the constant threat of death in all territories. There is no safe place.”
The ambassador said that in Eastern Ukraine, “it is really hell”.
“Russia reduced cities to ash. Many of those cities don’t exist any more.”
Former European Parliament president Pat Cox asked Ms Gerasko about the importance of visits by Irish politicians such as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to Ukraine.
“He saw with his own eyes how Ukrainians actually are trying to survive. Some live in so-called modular houses, which is bad quality. He will understand Ukraine more because he saw with his own eyes, people, streets, circumstances, everything,” she told the summer school, which is organised annually by former RTÉ director of news Joe Mulholland.
Davyd Arakhamia, a Georgia-born Ukrainian who was Ukraine’s lead negotiator when the war began, later on Wednesday gave a pre-recorded speech to the event about his life and early days of the Russian invasion.
His family originally fled the war in Abkhazia before arriving in Mykolaiv in Ukraine. He said in the beginning of the conflict where media were speculating about a Russian invasion in Ukraine, he did not believe it would happen in the way that western media were portraying.
But on the first night of the invasion “it was looking really bad. They were coming so close and so fast we thought we could not stopping [sic] them entering Kyiv.” He said that while some wanted Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy evacuated, the president himself wanted to stay.
He said Mr Zelenskiy told his team that he would not judge them if they wanted to leave the presidential office and leave the region with their families, but that he was staying.
Mr Arakhamia stayed and said he told Mr Zelenskiy a joke that his wife said that given how little time he spent with his six children anyway, he might as well stay and be labelled a hero.
Mr Arakhamia said the negotiations in the early days with Russia did not work because they were engaged in propaganda. “Let’s cut the BS,” he said he told the Russian delegation of negotiators. “Turn off the cameras, get out the journalists, let’s have real talks, I told them. By the second day I realised it was not possible.”
