The Diplomat
“My name is Olga Kovtun. I am Ukrainian, and I would like to address the ambassador of the Russian Federation in Spain, Mr. Yuri Korchagin”. This is how this Ukrainian journalist begins her video message against the Russian invasion. She asks the veteran diplomat to join the protests “against the war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine”.
Olga Kovtun is the daughter of Ukrainian diplomat Oleksandr Kovtun, who met Yuri Korchagin when he was ambassador in Buenos Aires between 2004 and 2009. At that time, “I had a close friendship with Alexandra, Mr. Korchagin’s youngest daughter“, recalls the journalist, now a refugee in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
In her personal video message to the Russian ambassador, Kovtun says that “I cannot remain silent” in the face of “the hardest and darkest times my country is going through”, which she describes as “a real genocide“. Rejecting the Kremlin’s justifications for the invasion, she asked Korchagin: “Do you really believe that I am a Nazi, that my parents are Nazis? I want to believe that you know, in your heart of hearts, that this is not true”.
She therefore asks Korchagin directly that “if you have the courage to protest against Putin’s terrorist regime, please do it now, be a great example of courage for all Russian diplomacy“. “If you do not do so,” the plea continues, “it would mean that you also bear full responsibility for the terrorist acts that are happening in Ukraine because of your government.”
Kovtun adds that “a month ago Yuri Korchagin was holding press conferences in Madrid, saying that Russia ‘has no intention of attacking Ukraine’ and calling the build-up of troops on the border ‘fake news‘. Now official sources at the Russian Embassy in Madrid relay Kremlin propaganda, justifying Putin’s ‘military operation’, without acknowledging that this is an unjustifiable aggression against an independent and sovereign country”.
