Sanctions circumvention equals war participation – Zelenskyy
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his evening address stated that other countries’ failure to comply with sanctions against Russia should be treated as participation in the war against Ukraine.

The President stressed that Russia alone would not have been able to inflict such damage on Ukraine by its attacks, which take place “literally every night”.
“Every Russian Shahed drone, every Russian missile – these are components made in other countries. One hundred and sixty-five strike units in one Russian night strike – all these Iskanders, Kalibr missiles and other means of killing – mean hundreds or even thousands of components from other countries. Components come from European countries, China, and even the US. Without such critical components, Russia would have no ability to destroy the lives of other nations,” Zelenskyy said.
He stressed that it is critical that sanctions be truly strong and impossible to circumvent under any circumstances.
“There must be no way left to supply Russia with critical components for its defence industry. Any violation of sanctions must be considered complicity in the war, and those who help destroy lives must be held accountable,” he added.
The ukrainian president made this statement on February 1, 2025, the day when Russians struck a residential building in the city of Poltava, killing at least seven civilians and injuring 17 others. There are also reports about war-related deaths of other civilians throughout Ukraine.
According to Zelenskyy, over the past week, Ukraine has suffered hundreds of Russian attacks with various types of weapons: about 1250 aerial bombs, over 750 attack drones, more than 20 missiles of various types.
Earlier, Bohdan Bernatskyy, a member of the Sanctions Policy Working Group of the Crimean Platform Expert Network, revealed at the Third Parliamentary Summit in Latvia that over 1,300 Russian military companies and 2 million industry workers continue operating, many without international restrictions.
During an interview with Hungarian state radio on Friday, Orbán claimed that Hungary had received a guarantee from the EU this week regarding the restoration of gas transit through Ukraine. Ukraine halted Russian gas supplies, stating Russia is using incomes to kill Ukrainians during its full-scale invasion.
As is known, Slovakia is financing Russia’s war in Ukraine through the purchase of Russian oil. Moreover, as TASR reported, Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Juraj Blajar wants to discuss at the EU level the extension of the exemption from the ban on imports of Russian pipeline oil.
Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, in an interview for the Civil Network OPORA, stated that Western countries lack the political will to confront Russia and are doing so with Ukrainian hands. Moreover, they do not even believe that Russia will attack them in the future. He emphasised that for EU countries, security is not a value but rather a comfort of life and the Zeitenwende has not shifted the mentality of German society. Klimkin is convinced that [Russian ruler Vladimir] “Putin and his entourage sense this weakness at an instinctual level”.
Reuters reported that in 2024, the bilateral trade volume between China and Russia reached a historic high of 1.74 trillion yuan ($237 billion), according to data released on Monday by China’s General Administration of Customs.