We are defending you, Kyiv Mayor Klitschko tells Davos delegates
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has used an impassioned speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos to hammer home Ukraine’s plea for support in its war against Russia, telling the rich and powerful: “We are defending you personally”.
Mr Klitschko played the sound of air raid sirens to delegates as he told them the war was killing people just 2,000 kilometres from the idyllic mountain venue.
The former boxer, speaking after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had demanded tougher western sanctions on Russia, said at least 120 civilians had died in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and 200 apartment buildings there had been destroyed in the fighting.
“You in Switzerland never hear a siren,” he said. “Any second, a rocket or bomb can land in your building. It’s very close and every one of you has to understand it.”
Mr Klitschko said his country was fighting to be part of the club of the world’s democracies against a Russian leadership that western officials have described as trying to keep its ex-Soviet neighbour in its sphere of influence.
He said the Kremlin saw Ukraine “as part of the Russian empire” and described President Vladimir Putin as having a vision to rebuild the former Soviet Union.
Gesturing at the Davos delegates, Mr Klitschko said: “We are fighting for our country, defending our family and children, but every one of you has to understand: we are defending you personally.
“We are fighting for values – democratic values. We are fighting, actually, for every one of you, and everyone has to understand that.”
Mr Klitschko said four children were among the civilians dead in Kyiv and that another 16 had been taken to hospital with injuries. He said the situation was far worse in other Ukrainian cities less accessible to international media.
Russia refocused its invasion away from Ukraine’s capital after failing to capture the city in the early weeks of the war. Moscow’s troops are now advancing to take control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in which fighting has raged for years.
Ukraine said yesterday it was fighting to keep control of the city of Severodonetsk, where Britain said Russia had sent its modern Terminator vehicles in a battle for a stronghold still controlled by Ukrainian forces.
Russia said it had destroyed an ammunition depot in Luhansk. Both sides have reported heavy enemy losses but given scarce details on their own casualties.
Mr Klitschko spoke at Davos on a panel alongside his brother Wladimir, who contrasted the deaths of civilians in towns around Kyiv with Russia’s claim to be carrying out a special operation against Ukraine’s military.
Photos of alleged massacre sites are part of a display at Davos called the Russian War Crimes House, previously the Russia House where delegates attending the summit from Moscow would have met.
Russia was barred from this year’s forum – the first fully fledged Davos gathering since the earliest days of the coronavirus outbreak in January 2020. Ukrainian officials are there to lobby for more support.
Speaking at the war crimes display, Andriy Yermak, an adviser to Mr Zelenskyy, said Russia’s apparent impunity in killing Ukrainian civilians meant the “fate of Europe and the world is at stake”.
“Today a new world is being born in my country,” he said. “We are resisting an empire that sees genocide and crimes against humanity as routine, not taboo.”
A Ukrainian court yesterday found a young Russian soldier guilty of war crimes and handed him a life sentence. It is the first such verdict during the three-month conflict.
The sergeant from Siberia had admitted in court to killing a civilian, Oleksandr Shelipov, 62, in the village of Chupakhivka in north-east Ukraine.
Prosecutors said the Russian soldier fired three or four times at Shelipov.
Mr Zelenskyy said Russian assets frozen in other countries should be used to pay compensation to victims of the war.
“There must be a precedent of punishment for the aggressor and investment in a peaceful life,” he said.