About 100 Ukrainians and supporters protested outside the de facto Russian embassy in Taipei yesterday to tell the world that “Russia is the aggressor” ahead of the third anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We are here to remind the world that Russia is the aggressor,” Korean-Ukrainian Oleksandr Shyn, one of the organizers, said at the event outside the de facto embassy — officially the Representative Office in Taipei for the Moscow-Taipei Coordination Commission on Economic and Cultural Cooperation.
Shyn’s remarks were made in an apparent reference to US President Donald Trump’s recent claim that Ukraine started the war with Russia.
Photo: Yu Chien Huang, AFP
“You should have never started it,” Trump said about Ukraine while criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who had expressed concern that his country was not included in the “peace” talks between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia.
Shyn said the US’ change of stance on Ukraine has left many Ukrainians feeling “betrayed.”
“We hope this [situation] will change,” he said.
Trump also recently labeled Zelenskiy a “dictator” who refuses to hold elections.
There is no question that Zelenskiy is the legitimate president of Ukraine and commander-in-chief of the army, Shyn said.
“We have martial law right now enacted and we cannot have the elections, we cannot endanger our people’s lives by having elections,” he said.
Under Ukraine’s constitution, it is not legal to hold national elections during a period of martial law.
Shyn also said that Ukraine is not opposed to making sacrifices to end the war.
“As the new realities show, we now live in an extremely transactional world. We’ll have to give something and we’ll have to offer something for the help we get, but I hope this will be rational,” he added.
Shyn said the protest was also meant to continue rallying support on behalf of Ukraine, particularly given the invasion has gone on for three years.
“We have a very general message, first of all, to ask for people to support us, but this time, of course, to support Ukraine’s agency and Ukraine’s will and Ukraine’s right to exist,” he said.
“And we also want to remind, as people living in Taiwan, to remind the world that Taiwan is supporting Ukraine, that this country on the other side of the world is standing with the people of Ukraine,” he added.
As of this month, Taiwan’s government has allocated more than US$130 million for infrastructure projects in Ukraine, such as bridges, hospitals, churches and schools, while private donations have exceeded US$32 million, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS