“I am addressing you today not primarily as an adversary. I am addressing you as a person who knows very well that no great power can win a war against reality,” Macinka began his speech. “You can temporarily control territory. You can temporarily control the narrative. You can create and control propaganda. But you cannot control time,” he added.
Macinka further stated that time will always tell who “talked about security and who discussed it”. He asked whether drones and artillery are the answer to the security concerns that Russia talked about before the invasion and which justify the war in Ukraine.
He added that although security concerns may be legitimate, “the invasion is not”. “Rockets are not an argument. I consider your rockets to be a physical admission of your own failure,” Macinka said.
According to him, the greatest power of a superpower is not to start a war, but to end a war. “After four years, the world would like to hear simple answers: What does your victory look like? How many destroyed cities are enough? How many wasted lives are enough? Because if victory does not have a clear end, then it is not a strategy. It is a cynical autopilot,” said the minister.
“Is Russia safer today than four years ago? Does it have more partners? More stability? More trust?” asked the Czech Foreign Minister Lavrov, who is not at the UN General Assembly.
Macinka then rhetorically asked Lavrov that “if the true answer is negative, and it really is negative”, then it is legitimate to ask whether the chosen path really leads to greater security” of Russia. “Wars do not end with the stroke of a pen. They end with the question: Why? And one day Ukraine will not answer this question. Russia will answer,” he continued.
The minister also recalled that Soviet soldiers fought side by side with European countries against Nazi Germany. “Today, however, the shadow of a new war falls on their memory,” he said.
Anniversary of the outbreak of war in Ukraine
Novinek editorial office has prepared a series of articles reflecting the conflict from several perspectives on the four-year anniversary of the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
