One Thousand Days of Unprovoked Aggression and Determined Resistance

One Thousand Days of Unprovoked Aggression and Determined Resistance

One thousand days have passed since Russia launched its unprovoked and brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. At a Security Council briefing marking the somber anniversary, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russian President Vladimir Putin believed his invasion would be a “quick victory,” that “Ukrainians would succumb, wave the white flag of defeat:”

“And yet, the Russian military failed to conquer Ukraine, end its existence as an independent country, or absorb it into Russia.”

When he couldn’t break the Ukrainian military, Putin ramped up efforts to break the Ukrainian people, said Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield:

“Killing tens of thousands of Ukrainian men, women, and children; uprooting millions of families from their homes; Bombing out thousands of schools and hospitals, energy infrastructure and food storage; abducting – abducting thousands of Ukrainian children and relocating them into Russia. And yet, for one thousand days, the people of Ukraine have not broken or bent.”

Hundreds of thousands of Russians have died fighting in Putin’s “cruel and callous war,” noted Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield. In desperation, Moscow has turned to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the DPRK. At least 10,000 North Korean soldiers, she said, have been sent to Russia and have begun engaging in combat with Russian forces.

“It is a move without modern precedent: not in over 100 years has Russia welcomed foreign troops onto its soil. And it’s one in blatant violation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1718, 1874, and 2270; Resolutions Russia agreed to only a few years ago.”

Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield said the bottom line is that “Putin has never accepted that Ukraine, a fellow UN Member State, has the same rights to sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity:”

“Perhaps it’s why Putin so underestimated the resolve of the Ukrainian people. How bravely and effectively they have been able to defend their homeland, their democratically elected government, their culture and way of life, for 1,000 days.”

“As Ukrainians continue the fight against imperialist invasion and might-makes-right ideology,” said Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, “the United States stands with them. ... I call on Russia to end its aggression against Ukraine, and now. Let this madness not continue. Not one day more.”