“I hope the peace agreement will be signed. I hope peace talks will be conducted,” he said in a phone interview with the Dayton Daily News Tuesday. “Young people and children should not die. No civilian should die because of someone who is crazy and who doesn’t give a (expletive) about people’s lives.”
Faraponov called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal for his unprovoked attack on Ukraine.
Faraponov said Kyiv is a large city, full of not just government buildings that the Russian military aims to capture, but people’s homes. Millions of people live there, and many can’t get out.
“I’m really worried about all my friends who could not leave,” he said.
Russia has increasingly started targeting civilian areas, firing on Kyiv’s main TV tower and a square in the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. A 40-mile convoy of Russian tanks and military vehicles advanced toward Kyiv Tuesday.
Faraponov, a political analyst for Kyiv-based news outlets Internews-Ukraine and UkraineWorld, recently wrote an opinion piece calling for the west to enact as severe of sanctions as possible.
“There is no more time to waste,” he wrote. “Major sanctions should target all Russians, not just the elites. This disaster led by Putin must be stopped!”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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