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Only brutal force can stop Russia: Polish president

04.05.2022 07:00
The West should keep supplying weapons to Ukraine and not be deterred by threats from Russia because only brutal force can stop Vladimir Putin's war, Polish President Andrzej Duda said, as Moscow's invasion of Ukraine entered its 10th week.
Prezydent dla WSJ: tylko brutalną siłą możemy powstrzymać Rosję
Prezydent dla "WSJ": tylko brutalną siłą możemy powstrzymać RosjęPAP/Łukasz Gągulski

"We must not be afraid of Russia’s threats,” Duda told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Tuesday.

“If we want to achieve any kind of success in our relationship with Russia, in this situation where Russia has attacked Ukraine, any success we can have is only if we apply brutal strength, because only brutal strength, brutal power is able to stop Russia," Duda said.

Poland has provided Ukraine with more than 200 tanks, 100 infantry fighting vehicles and 100,000 rifles, alongside drones, self-propelled howitzers and other armoured vehicles needed to wage the war, according to the WSJ.

“If there was a need," Ukrainian President "Volodymyr Zelensky just calls me, and I’m saying that literally,” Duda said in the interview. “He grabs the receiver and dials my number, and then he tells me what Ukrainians need, what they need from us, or what they need from other countries across the globe, because we don’t have everything of course in stock.”

Duda also told the WSJ that he was planning to visit Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, to help coordinate Ukraine’s exports of the grain.

He has also been discussing Ukraine’s wheat exports with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the World Food Program and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, both UN agencies, the WSJ reported.

Ukraine exports about 12 percent of the world’s wheat, and its economy is heavily dependent on those shipments, according to the WSJ.

Duda told the paper that the West should not be doing business with Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

“The West is still looking at Russia as a business partner and Russia is not a business partner,” Duda said in the interview.

(gs)

Source: PAPwsj.com