Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisor Mykhailo Podolyak, on Saturday told Freedom TV that negotiations with Western allies on transferring aircraft and long-range missiles to Ukraine are being carried out in an accelerated mode.
Podolyak said his country’s allies understand that the armored vehicles they’re sending over must have air cover.
“In the same way, to drastically reduce the key tool of the Russian army, what they are fighting with today on the front line, which is, first of all, artillery, we need missiles that will destroy their warehouses.”
He pointed out that in Crimea alone, the Russians maintain more than 100 warehouses containing weapons of various specifications, “and of course, they need to be destroyed. Otherwise, the Russian army’s units located in Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk will have a significant amount of artillery capabilities. I don’t think that in the framework of the war, anyone doesn’t understand this,” Podolyak said.
“Therefore, first: negotiations are already underway. Second: negotiations are proceeding at an accelerated pace. Third: our partners understand all this. Fourth: there are still nuances regarding the internal psychological status in partner countries,” he explained.
Podolyak explained that Ukraine’s Western allies are still paralyzed by their fear of what the “world architecture” would look like as a result of the Ukraine War.
“We need to work with this. We must show real pictures of this war. We must speak reasonably: this and that will reduce the number of deaths; this will reduce the burden on the infrastructure; this will reduce security threats to the European continent; and this will help localize the war,” Podolyak said, adding: “And we are doing it, and in a short time we will move to aviation and long-range missiles, too.”
In December 2020, the Ukrainian national weekly news magazine Focus Magazine listed Podolyak as the third among the 100 most influential Ukrainians.
Podolyak, 51, was born in Ukraine but lived in Belarus, and in 2004 became deputy editor-in-chief of the opposition Belarusian newspaper Vremya. In June 2004, Belarus KGB officers showed up at his home and gave him half an hour to collect his things and leave the country, accusing him of activities that “contradict the interests of state security,” and publishing “slanderous fabrications about the real situation in the country, calls to destabilize the political situation in Belarus.”
