Newly elected Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen paid an official visit to Kiev on Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st February, 2023) Newly elected Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen paid an official visit to Kiev on Wednesday.
"After almost one year of war, #Ukraine is not forgotten. Together with President @ZelenskyyUa and the brave people of Ukraine - we stand for European values," Van der Bellen tweeted.
The Austrian leader also visited Bucha and expressed his condolences to the Ukrainian people for the alleged victims of Russian shelling.
"Here in #Bucha, I mourn for every single life destroyed by this terrible war of aggression. These crimes against humanity, against everything we stand for, must not be forgotten and must not go unpunished," he added.
On Tuesday, during a visit to Bratislava, Van der Bellen said that Russia was waging a "colonial war against Ukraine" in which Western countries "must help" Kiev, Austrian broadcaster ORF reported.
Russia's Ambassador to Vienna, Dmitry Lyubinsky, severely criticized Van der Bellen's words, noting that such a statement "further expands the boundaries of Western mythology around the events of the last decade in Ukraine."
Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in response to calls by the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics for protection from Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry has said the goal of the operation, which targets Ukrainian military infrastructure, is to completely liberate the Donbas region.
Since the beginning of the special military operation, Ukraine has repeatedly attempted to discredit Russian armed forces by staging provocations. In April, Ukrainian authorities and media distributed footage showing the bodies of dead civilians strewn across Bucha and blamed the killings on Russian forces that had withdrawn from the city on March 30. The Russian Defense Ministry said that the footage was a staged provocation and that no civilians died at the time the Russian forces controlled Bucha. Moscow's request for a United Nations Security Council meeting on Bucha was blocked by the UK.
