Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted to discussing the surrender terms placed by Vladimir Putin to end Russia’s military campaign against his country. That was on Monday night (7), already dawn on Tuesday (8) in Europe.
At the end of Tuesday, however, the same Zelensky made an emotional virtual appearance in the British Parliament and gave a speech tracing the famous speech in which Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in that same House of Commons, promised to fight to the end against Nazi Germany in 1940. .
The negotiator Zelenski emerged in an interview with the American TV network ABC. In it, he commented on the ultimatum made by Putin through his spokesman, who in a conversation with Reuters on Monday listed the points for the end of the war.
“I think that items about temporarily occupied territories and pseudo-republics not recognized by anyone other than Russia, we can discuss and find a compromise on how these territories will live from here on out,” he said.
He was referring to the demand for recognition of Crimea, annexed by Putin in 2014, as Russian, and the pro-Russian rebel areas of Donbass (eastern Ukraine), supported by the Kremlin.
“What is most important to me is how people who live in these territories and want to be part of Ukraine are going to live,” he said.
Another signal given by Zelensky was on the issue of Ukrainian neutrality: the Russians want the local Constitution to be amended to prohibit membership of blocs, notably NATO (Western military alliance).
“I relaxed on this issue a long time ago, after I understood that NATO is not ready to accept Ukraine,” he said. He complained about the way spokesman Dmitri Peskov put the terms.
“This is an ultimatum, and we are not prepared for ultimatums. I am ready to dialogue, not capitulate,” he said. The war started almost two weeks ago, on the 24th of February.
That said, Zelensky donned his mantle of defender of Ukraine and hero of the West a few hours later, as he appeared before Members of Parliament in London. “We will not surrender and we will not lose. We will fight to the end, at sea, in the air. We will continue to fight for our land, whatever the cost, in the woods, in the fields, on the coasts, in the streets,” he said. He received a standing ovation.
Zelensky, who has been shown in the West as something of an Eastern European Churchill for his resistance to the Russian attack on Kiev, decided to copy his predecessor, more precisely the speech of June 4, 1940 – the second of the three most famous speeches in the acute phase. of the fall of France to the forces of Adolf Hitler.
“We will go to the end. We will fight in France. We will fight in the seas and oceans […] We will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the landing areas, we will fight on the fields and in the streets […] We will never surrender”, said the British statesman (1874-1965).
Talks between Russia and Ukraine remain open, but three rounds of talks later have advanced little beyond trying to oil the creation of humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from areas under siege by Moscow. Even that hasn’t worked out, with accusations side by side.
The terms put forward by Peskov do not differ much from those of Putin’s ultimatum to the West in December, which was rejected. Now, however, he lays the cards with his troops inside Ukraine, in very fierce battles. The US claims that the Russians have already lost 2,000 to 4,000 troops.
There is, of course, no estimate made of Allied casualties in Kiev. Moscow has only admitted 498 deaths in the first week of the conflict so far, which is already a complicated performance in terms of the proportion of wounded, three times more. It’s a far cry from that of modern armies, closer to 1 killed to 10 wounded, like the sheet showed.
