New Olexader Scherba`s op-ed "Russia`s new old imperials" was published in Mail&Guardian newspaper. Ambassador stated:

Russia opens a door to new old imperialism. Not the economic one. Not the cultural one. Not the creeping one. A marching one. A proud one. A kind of imperialism that literally invades your home and says: from now on, what used to be yours is mine.  For the Global South, it must ring a bell. Yet strangely, many nations that have been through this experience in the past, do not recognise their own pain in Ukraine’s suffering. Which only partly goes on the account of Russia being good at fooling people. The rest is on account of people wanting to be fooled. When the full-blown invasion of 2022 happened, everything in Russia’s actions was proud, demonstrative, “in your face” – the cruelty, the deception, the imperial hubris towards “the peasants” in Ukraine. Seeing Russia get ready for a huge war, world leaders spent the year 2021 traveling to Moscow and pleading with Putin not to start it. He responded with ultimatums. Soon afterward the world witnessed Russia invade Ukraine – arrogantly, cheerfully, confident that it would fall within weeks.  Yet when it turned out that “peasants” could fight back, Russia was faced with a new task: to make the world forget who attacked whom and who begged not to start this insanity. Sadly, it largely worked, for the same reason: people want to be fooled; they easily forget what they saw if what they saw does not sit well with their preconceived notions about “anti-imperial Russia”. Therefore, it needs to be said again: in 2014 and 2022, a big nation that proudly sees itself as an empire (just listen to what Putin says for domestic consumption and not for his charm offensives in the Global South) invaded a smaller one. It not only violated multiple international treaties and basic principles of international law but also broke a decade-long global taboo of not annexing your neighbour’s land. With one strike, it created a world where, like centuries ago, it is okay for bigger nations to carve up smaller ones. And the “smaller ones” put up with this. Look how persistently dozens of nations refuse to condemn the blatant violation of what just recently seemed inviolable. For instance, how cowardly many abstained and left the premises of the United Nations when last week it voted on the return of nearly 20 000 Ukrainian children taken away by Russia.  Welcome to a shameless dark reality where it is okay not only to start an aggression against a sovereign nation but also to loot its children as if they were washing machines. 

Read full op-ed via link.