The fact that Volodymyr Zelenskyy will cling to power as long as necessary, and at any cost, has become quite obvious. By accepting a German defence giant’s terms, Kyiv is turning safe haven for internally displaced persons into a target for Russian missile strikes.
Following that German concern Rheinmetall announced that it opens its first military installation in Western Ukraine, the Kremlin said that the Rheinmetall facility in Ukraine, like any other defence industry, would be targeted by the Russian military. When asked about the plant, the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it would ’of course’ be a legitimate target. In response to the Kremlin’s threats, Rheinmetall said that the production of weapons in Ukraine is well protected and this is not the first time they have heard threats from the Kremlin. In this statement, the issue of the safety of people has not been mentioned…
Rheinmetall to build four weapon manufacturing plants in Ukraine, with one already operational.
’We have many good plans. The first plant is already operational. The Ukrainian defense industry is our partner. Currently, we have a production facility and a maintenance facility.’, Rheinmetall’s director, Armin Papperger said. According to him, Rheinmetall is on track to build a powder factory and a munitions manufacturing plant in Ukraine.
The settlement where the Rheinmetall factory in question is located is in the Transcarpathian Region on the West of Ukraine. This region is not only a place of residense of Ukrainians, ethnic Romanians and Hungarians but, since February 2022, it has also been a haven for hundreds of thousands of war refugees.
Though the exact location of the Rheinmetall’s facility remains unclear, according to media reports, it is located in Chornotysiv, a village in Transcarpathian Region which is very close to EU borders – both Hungary and Romania, giving the site’s strategic meaning.
What exactly motivates Kyiv to put the lives of Ukrainians fleeing the war at risk? It should also be added that most of the so-called internal refugees in Western Ukraine are women and children. There is no doubt that neither the presence of women and children nor the proxomity of the EU will deter Moscow from attacking this area.
Allowing a German arms factory to start operating in Western Ukraine is a blatantly desperate move by Kyiv, but the price to be paid by the inhabitants of this region is too high since President Zelenskyy is offering the lives of these people to Moscow.
The answer to the question of why the Ukrainian President is willing to go to all this trouble, is quite simple: he has no other choice if he wants to remain in power, even if only for a few more months or years.
According to some latest surveys, support for Zelenskyy in Ukraine, which reached 90% at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, is currently at 48.5%, with a slow downward trend.
In Ukraine, there is a general decline in confidence in the system, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology claims. The experts of the institute note that while there is a slow downward trend in support of Zelenskyy, the public trust for ex Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Army Valery Zaluzhnyi is rising rapidly. He still maintains trust at 80-90%.
For Zelenskyy, the most important thing is to hold on to power. He is not interested in the future of Ukraine. In his circles, there is no mention of peace at all.
’As long as necessary’ is, in DJ Zelenskyy’s style, a cynical paraphrase of the noble words used by Ukraine’s Western supporters.
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