Had the world not ignored the signals from Russia, Ukrainian lives could have been saved.
One of the keys had been offering support several years ago.
– Then the war would probably have already ended, he says islandfirst lieutenant Joakim Paasikivi.
If Ukraine had received stronger support after independence, after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 or before the war, the situation in the country would have looked different. Lieutenant Colonel Joakim Paasikivi believes that there have long been clear signals that Russia wanted Ukraine to belong to them, but that the world chose not to take it seriously.
– Had we strengthened Ukraine before the war, the war might not have come. And now during the war, the aid packages, no matter how good they were, have been characterized by too little and too late, he says.
According to Paasikivi, a clear example of Russia’s long-planned conquest of Ukraine was in 1996 when Yevgeny Primakov, the then foreign minister of Russia, said that they were striving for “supremacy over the post-Soviet area”.
– They wanted the Soviet Union back, but without communism.
In the way of Russia’s plans
Paasikivi says that Russia’s opposition to NATO is not about fear, but about the alliance standing in the way of Russia being able to rule over neighboring countries.
– We could have seen it coming, he says.
Short-termism in foreign policy in the West is also a contributing factor to why the situation looks the way it does now.
– Putin has said that you don’t know what the West wants because we change our minds every four years. Democracy’s strength is that we choose our leaders and democracy’s disadvantage is that we have leaders who often have a term of office ahead of them.
He believes that it would have been a completely different starting point if Ukraine had received the help they received throughout the war already at the beginning of 2022.
– By then the war might have already ended.