Zelenskyy calls international institutional reform to avoid war

Doha, Mar 26 (EFE).- Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday called for the international institutions to be reformed after their failure to prevent Russia’s invasion of his country that began over a month ago.

“We need a real reform of international institutions so that a country cannot do whatever it wants,” Zelenskyy said during an address via video link to the Doha Forum.

“We need mechanisms to ensure that countries 28 times larger cannot do whatever they want,” he said, pointing out that Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 went unpunished.

“We need to ensure that the nuclear capabilities of a country are not used to commit injustices against other nations,” Zelenskyy said.

Despite the sanctions imposed by the international community, the Ukrainian president said that “Russia has not yet been punished for what it has done in Ukraine”.

“No country can use energy as a weapon to blackmail the world”, he said after Russia announced that what it called “unfriendly” countries would have to pay for Russian gas in rubles.

He compared the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, besieged and bombed by Russian forces, to Aleppo, a Syrian city that was devastated in the war.

“We have to protect the international order not only for Ukraine but starting with Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Somalia, for all the people of the world,” he added. EFE

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