Speaking at the Doha Forum on Saturday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pointed out that Russia is fueling a dangerous arms race bragging about its nuclear weapons and its ability to destroy not only a certain country but the entire planet.
Zelenskyy explained that the most powerful countries in the world, including Russia, has given Ukraine security assurances when the country dismantled its nuclear stockpile in the 1990s, but these assurances did not become guarantees.
He branded an ultimate manifestation of injustice the fact that precisely one of those countries, which was supposed to give one of the greatest security promises, attacked Ukraine.
Addressing the forum via live video message on the 31st day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zelenskyy also called on the organizer of the annual meeting of international political and business leaders, Qatar, to increase the natural gas production to counter Moscow’s efforts to use energy as a weapon.
He noted that the future of Europe now rests with Qatar’s efforts and its output since even the European countries that are trying to wean themselves off Russian oil and gas have turned to Qatar for alternative supplies.
Germany, for example, has committed to buying liquefied gas from Qatar and is now planning to build two huge terminals to receive the gas.
Qatar, however, believes that replacing Russian natural gas on the European market is not practically possible since almost 40% of the total volume of gas supplied to both the European and the world market comes from Russia, Qatari Energy Minister and CEO of state-owned QatarEnergy, Saad al-Kaabi, said in an interview with CNN previously this week.
Stressing that Qatar will not take sides in the Ukraine crisis since energy should stay out of politics, Al-Kaabi also added that they would not impose sanctions on the Russian oil and gas sector.
After imposing economic sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, the EU announced it would move towards gradually slashing consumption of Russian natural gas this year and already signed an agreement with the US for buying American LNG.
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