Russia Is a Terrorist State

(The Atlantic Council platform, July 19, 2022. Speech by Oleksii Reznikov, Minister of Defence, Ukraine).

Greetings, everyone.

I would like to thank the Atlantic Council for our cooperation, which is in its third year now. I appreciate the opportunity to present the Ukrainian perspective at your platform.

I would also like to thank Ambassador John Herbst, a true friend to Ukraine, for his personal efforts to support our state.

My speech has one central thesis.

Russia is a terrorist state.

Russia has been openly committing acts of state terror against Ukraine. It has killed thousands of our citizens, including women and children. It has been destroying our country.

Just the three most notorious missile attacks against the peaceful cities of Ukraine in July — Vinnytsia, Chasiv Yar in Donetsk region and Serhiivka in Odesa region — have killed 92, including 5 children. 202 persons were injured. These numbers don’t include daily civilian casualties of artillery shelling.

At the same time, Russia is a state sponsor of global terrorism. It is trying to establish terror as a method of getting things done on the global level.

Fear is a terrorist’s main instrument.

The difference between Ukraine and Russia lies in the fact that Ukrainians want to live in freedom and prosperity. We are building a state based on human rights and freedoms. We went out to Maidan for these values. We are ready to fight and die for them.

To the contrary, Russia can only exist as a vertical hierarchy of terror that feeds on oil, gas and human blood.

Therefore, the war in Ukraine cannot be stopped by territorial concessions. Moscow has no interest in any particular chunk of Ukrainian land, any particular city or a branch of economy.

The Kremlin wants us to change our way of life. It wants us to betray our values. It wants us to cower in terror, because terror is the source of the Kremlin’s power within Russia itself.

Moreover, the war cannot be contained in Ukraine. The Russian authorities have repeated this many times. I would like to remind you that late last year Russia issued threats not against Ukraine but against the West. Against the NATO. Against Europe.

Russia wants the democratic and successful West as its alternative gone. Undermining the NATO and the EU is the Kremlin’s goal, and it’s ready to do so from within or from without.

There’s no line in Ukraine or, broadly speaking, in Europe where Russia would stop on its own free will. It can only be stopped by mounting resistance.

From this perspective, Russia as a terrorist state poses a problem for the whole world.

Today the Kremlin is routinely committing war crimes in Ukraine. It is abducting, looting, raping and killing.

Simultaneously Russia has used other instruments of terror:

· Food. At the G20 meeting, Josep Borrell has openly said that the Kremlin is using grain as a weapon.

· Energy sources. Russia is blackmailing other states with cutting off access to its resources and blocking alternative sources of oil in Kazakhstan and other countries.

· Migrants. The Kremlin has been weaponizing migrants since 2015. It has also directed streams of migrants towards the Baltic states through Belarus in 2021.

· Nuclear energy. Russia was the first state in history to perpetrate armed seizures of nuclear power plants. Russia has been holding hostage the staff of Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, for almost 5 months now. They have recently killed a plant worker.

· Blackmail with nuclear weapons. The Kremlin’s propaganda workers on Russian federal TV channels have been openly discussing the possibility of a nuclear strike, with a NATO country as one of its possible targets.

To accomplish its military goals, the Kremlin has been using:

· Other states, primarily Belarus, as proxies.

· Cyberwarfare.

· Propaganda and disinformation.

· Violating the laws of free navigation, etc.

This terrorist arsenal is directed not only and not primarily against Ukraine. Its target is the whole planet.

It is an attempt to establish the new world order. This new world order would be based on terror. Not on the rule of international laws but on the rule of force.

We can already see the dangerous preconditions of the new world order.

First, the existing international institutions, such as the UN, the OSCE and other, have proved their inability to prevent the war. These instruments don’t function when a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a cofounder of the post-WW II world order is acting like a global terrorist.

Second, this order may be attractive to other tyrants. They might take instruments from the Russian playbook to meet their own goals.

Third, the democratic world is slow in its response.

This is why Ukraine’s representatives at all levels, starting with President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, have been using every opportunity to stress: Russia needs to be officially designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. The Kremlin needs to be seen as the leader of global terrorism, and treated accordingly.

As a lawyer, I am certain that we have more than enough formal reasons to do so. Russia has been financing terrorist organizations, such as the Wagner Group. It has created the terrorist hubs of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. The Kremlin is giving direct orders to the terrorist hordes in military uniforms under its control to slaughter Ukrainian children. To destroy hospitals, schools and grain silos. To burn the crops. There’s no shortage of evidence.

We are asking you to listen to Ukraine and act now. We have been warning our partners about everything that has come to pass.

Let me refer you to my article posted at the Atlantic Council website on December 3, 2021.

I wrote that a large-scale conflict would create 3–5 million of Ukrainian refugees and pose a threat to the global food security.

I have also noted that Ukraine would fight regardless of whether our western partners decide to use preventative measures against the Kremlin or not. To extend assistance to Ukraine or not. We are much stronger now than we have been in 2014. My predictions came true, down to a t.

Western analysts predicted that Kyiv would fall within 3 days. That Ukraine would fall within 10 days, and that a pro-Russian regime would be installed. Despite these predictions, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the entire Ukrainian nation have been fighting for almost 5 months now.

I am certain that this war could have been prevented if Ukraine and Georgia had received NATO Membership Action Plan status in 2008.

Russia could have been stopped after its attack on Georgia in 2008 or after its occupation of Crimea in the spring of 2014.

Russia could have and should have been stopped when it seized the Sea of Azov and began its creeping occupation of the Black Sea. When it turned Belarus into a base for further attacks. Instead, we were told not to provoke Putin.

The war could have been prevented as late as the winter of 2021/22, had the global community introduced the sanctions that we’ve been asking for. The very sanctions that have been introduced now.

Also, if Ukraine got the weapons that we began to receive after February 24. Prior to that, men and women in high places have been telling me personally that that was impossible.

Now there’s a war raging in Europe on the scale unseen in the last 80 years.

Therefore, we are asking you to hear out our recipe.

First, there’s no need to fear. Russia has to be defeated on the battlefield. Ukraine has proved that that is possible.

According to unofficial estimates of militants from the Russian occupying army, approximately 10–11 thousand occupiers have been killed in battles for Severodonetsk and Lysychansk (more than 2 thousand from the so-called 2nd Army Corps of the «Luhansk People’s Republic», and approximately 8–9 thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation). More than 20 thousand sustained injuries, over one third of them heavy, with traumatic amputations resulting from mine blasts.

But in order to win, we need weapons.

There’s only one possible format of victory: Russia needs to give back all the land it seized, including Crimea. We need weapons fast, and in sufficient quantities.

We need air and rocket defense systems and long-range weapons, in particular for MLRS. Anti-ship missiles, aviation, tanks and armored vehicles. We need them to mount a successful counter-offensive and push the enemy out of our land.

Second, we cannot depend on the terrorist. We need to change our perspective and get used to the idea of isolating the terrorist. The West’s idea of changing Russia through cooperation doesn’t work, at least as long as Russia is being ruled by fear.

The large-scale war has demonstrated the extent to which the elites of certain countries depend on Russia. They seem to have fallen prey to the Stockholm syndrome. They need to break free of it.

To begin with, we need to destroy the Russian network of disinformation and political influence. We also need to get rid of Russian energy sources. In that case Russia won’t be able to exert pressure on us.

Third, for the terrorist to stop posing a threat, he needs to be stripped of resources. We need to strengthen the sanctions and make sure that they cannot be evaded. Without resources, the Kremlin will only be able to terrorize its own nation, and not for long either.

Therefore, it is of paramount importance that Russia is designated a state sponsor of terrorism.

Fourth, we need to start a conversation about the foundations of the new world order. President Volodymyr Zelensky has already mentioned one of its principles: the world needs to respond to violations of international laws within 24 hours. In that case, aggression won’t stand a chance.

The USA has been leading the fight against terrorism since 9/11. It is rather telling that Russia plans to imitate some sort of referendum to incorporate the seized Ukrainian land on September 11. The Kremlin associates itself with terrorism even in its choice of symbols.

The Ramstein format, initiated by Washington and moderated by my friend and colleague, the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, is a blueprint for the free world’s response to the global terrorist threat. It already unites 50 countries from all continents.

This format is valuable because it shows not only the shared understanding of challenges, but also the capability and willingness to act.

Ukraine is deeply grateful to the US for its leadership in the organization of international assistance, and to every partner who supports us.

In April, the world found out about, and was horrified by Russia’s genocidal acts in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv. We will discover dozens such sites on the temporarily occupied territories. Ukraine wants to survive as a nation, so its resistance will not flag.

If we want to live in the safe world, we don’t have a choice but to stop the terrorists. They need to be brought to justice through a special tribunal.

It is best to do so in Ukraine now than next to the new Berlin Wall.

Thank you for your attention.