On 23 February, Ambassador Olexander Scherba spoke at the Cape Town Press Club about Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and its global implications.
“It is amazing how cynically Putin plays with the world’s desire to restore peace,” he said. He recalled that Russia justified the invasion by claiming its “legitimate strategic interests” had been ignored and that the world order was unfair, “implying that somehow Ukraine was a threat to Russia, not the other way around.”

He noted that four years into the war, Russia is using the language of peace negotiations to demand territory it failed to seize militarily. “Russia is using the so-called ‘peace negotiations’ to twist everyone’s arms to get more of Ukraine’s territory as a precondition to end the war — the very territory it could not conquer in four years.”

He added that what was presented as resistance to an unjust world order “turned out to be a plain good old land-grab.”

“The continent that suffered too long from one sort of imperialism cannot become a blunt instrument in the hands of another,” he said.