Brussels: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a fresh call on Friday for European Union states to ban visas for Russian nationals to keep the bloc from becoming a “supermarket” open to anyone with the means to enter.
Zelensky said his proposal did not apply to Russians who needed help for risking their freedom or their lives by resisting Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s policies.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.Credit:Getty
“There must be guarantees that Russian killers or accomplices of state terror not use Schengen visas,” Zelensky said in a nightly address, referring to visas granting the holder access to the border-free Schengen Area that spans several EU states.
“Secondly, we must not destroy the very idea of Europe – our common European values. Europe must therefore not be transformed into a supermarket where it is not important who walks in and where the main thing is that people just pay for their goods.”
Zelensky first urged a visa ban in an interview this week with the Washington Post, saying Russians should live in their own world until they changed their philosophy.
Zelensky’s appeal has yet to win support from the EU’s major players. But he said he was heartened by support from the ex-Soviet Baltic states and the Czech Republic, current rotating EU president. Finland has also backed the notion.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced Zelensky’s appeal this week, saying “any attempt to isolate Russians or Russia is a process that has no prospects”.
Ukraine and Russia accused each other of risking catastrophe by shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian forces in a region expected to become one of the next big front lines of the war.
Western countries have called for Moscow to withdraw its troops from the Zaporizhzhia plant, but there has been no sign so far of Russia agreeing to do that.
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in territory under Russian military control, in southeastern Ukraine. Credit:AP
The plant was captured by Russian forces in early March but is still run by Ukrainian technicians.
The plant dominates the south bank of a vast reservoir on the Dnipro river that cuts across southern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces controlling the towns and cities on the opposite bank have come under intense bombardment from the Russian-held side.
Three civilians, including a boy, were wounded in overnight shelling of one of those towns, Marhanets, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentyn Reznichenko, said.
Kyiv has said for weeks it is planning a counteroffensive to recapture Zaporizhzhia and neighbouring Kherson provinces, the largest part of the territory Russia seized after its February 24 invasion and still in Russian hands.
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said there was more shelling of the eastern town of Kramatorsk on Friday. Video posted on his Telegram channel showed major damage to private homes. Three people were killed, the town’s mayor said in a Facebook post.
Reuters
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