A midlevel Russian diplomat broke ranks and resigned with a scathing statement on the war, and President Volodymyr Zelensky called on world leaders to turn up the pressure.
Hoping to shore up international resolve, Ukraine’s president told global political and business leaders Monday that as far as they have gone to punish Moscow for invading Ukraine, it was not far enough.
“This is really the moment when it is decided whether brute force will rule the world,” declared President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader was speaking by video link to the World Economic Forum in Davos on a day when a Russian diplomat resigned with a blistering statement denouncing President Vladimir V. Putin, and when a Russian soldier became the first to be convicted by a Ukrainian court of a war crime. Earlier in the day, in a sign of the broader implications of the war, President Biden indirectly addressed warnings by Ukraine and its most ardent allies that failing to stand up to Russia would encourage future territorial aggression, including by China. At a news conference in Japan, Mr. Biden stated bluntly that he would use military force to defend Taiwan from China, and go much farther than he has to aid Ukraine, dropping the longstanding U.S. posture of ambiguity about such a conflict. When asked how the American response might differ in the event of an attack on Taiwan, Mr. Biden prefaced his answer by saying that Mr. Putin must “pay a dear price for his barbarism in Ukraine.”
NATO and European Union countries have so far demonstrated remarkable agreement in imposing tough economic sanctions on Russia and supporting Ukraine, but some fractures have appeared. Hungary has held up an E.U. embargo on Russian oil imports, though Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor and energy minister, said Monday that he was “positive that Europe will find a solution within the next days.”
And while some European countries, including Poland, have insisted that any peace agreement must include complete Russian withdrawal from Ukraine, others have been pressing for a less ambitious cease-fire, leaving open the question of whether the West might acquiesce to some of Russia’s territorial gains. Italy’s government has put forward a cease-fire proposal that the Russian government said Monday it had received and was reviewing. But it is unclear where the combatants stand on a deal. Russia has kept its position murky, alternately embracing and spurning negotiation, sometimes in the span of a few hours. Earlier in the war, Ukraine’s government said it would accept neutrality, dropping the idea of joining the NATO alliance — a key Russian demand and a feature of the Italian proposal — and would be willing to discuss territorial cessions under some conditions.
