This Saturday the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union (EU), Josep Borrell, stressed that applying a no-fly zone in the war in Ukraine implies shooting down Russian planes that violate it and would mean “extending the conflict to a third world war”.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper The newspaperBorrell has thus justified the EU’s refusal to apply this no-fly zone, as requested by the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski.
“When someone asks for a no-fly zone, that means having the ability and willingness to shoot down Russian planes that violate it; It would be to extend the conflict to a third world war and it is clear that we do not want to do it”, said the Spanish politician.
Borrell has warned that if Russian President Vladimir Putin wins the war and subjugates Ukraine, it would mean opening “the doors to the law of the jungle, for the strongest to dominate the weakest.”
The head of European diplomacy has assured that he has no confirmation that the Kremlin is going to recruit 16,000 Syrian soldiers to fight in Ukraine, but “everything indicates that -the Russians- are having more casualties than they thought, that they have lost a lot of material , that its aviation is not being effective and that it does not have control of the airspace”.
According to Borrell, Putin “thought that Ukraine was weak, it would surrender in days, that Westerners would be divided, that we would not be able to apply such strong economic and financial sanctions,” but “he was wrong regarding everything.”
In any case, he specified that the objective of the EU is not to overthrow Putin, but to put pressure: “What happens in the Russian political system is a matter for the Russians. We do not sanction Russia to change its political regime, but it is evident that we are punishing with sanctions the oligarchs, who are the basis of Putin’s political support”.
Likewise, Borrell has stated that he does not believe that “the justification for the war can be found in Ukraine’s hypothetical membership in NATO, which was not on the agenda at all.” (I)
