Volodymyr Zelensky, in the next phase of talks to end the war in Ukraine, intends to draw a red line at the most contentious issue on the table: the Russian demand for Ukraine’s sovereign territory. As long as he remains the nation’s president, Zelensky will not agree to give up land in exchange for peace, Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Andriy Yermak, told me today in an exclusive interview.
“Not a single sane person today would sign a document to give up territory,” said Yermak, who has served as Zelensky’s chief of staff, lead negotiator, and closest aide throughout the full-scale war with Russia.
“As long as Zelensky is president, no one should count on us giving up territory. He will not sign away territory,” he told me by telephone from Kyiv. “The constitution prohibits this. Nobody can do that unless they want to go against the Ukrainian constitution and the Ukrainian people.”
Don’t give up a single meter of land
Require reparations from Russia
Demand all children back
Demand a formal apology for the pain and suffering caused
Demand Putin in jail through the ICC
Don’t give up a single meter of land
By doing what?
A little tired of hearing this endless “well, if I were Ukraine, I would simply win the war and claim a trillion dollars in reparations and make Russia disappear off the map” Internet wish casting.
What do you do to extract any of these concessions that hasn’t already been tried? And how many more people are you willing to throw into the meat grinder trying?
When you post about Ukraine on reddit you get conservative white Americans who have bought the propaganda and think strong, proud, masculine Putin is saving Ukrainian orphans from nazis, and have a mountain of arguments why we shouldn’t fund wars overseas unless it’s Israel, Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan. Or Venezuela of course.
You post about Ukraine on Lemmy and suddenly every tankie hiding in the shadows can’t take the pressure anymore and HAVE to pile out to whinge about how unwinnable the war is, and that it’s useless to resist a tyrant and invader because something something 21st century capitalism and oil economies and nothing will even change under Putin’s rule anyway so why are we even so worked up and on and on.
I feel bad for Ukrainian people having to endure not just a hostile invasion but scorn and skepticism from the whole world because some people have such loose, soupy brains that they have invent entire straw-universes to validate the erections they get thinking Putin’s bare chest.
every tankie hiding in the shadows can’t take the pressure anymore and HAVE to pile out to whinge about how unwinnable the war is
Being a Tankie is when you don’t want to fight a war? But being a conservative is when you do want to fight a war? And they’re both on the same side?
I feel bad for Ukrainian people having to endure not just a hostile invasion but scorn and skepticism
I feel bad for anyone trapped in a warzone and treated like fodder for the war machines.
But I’ve got no pity for the cheerleaders on the sidelines eager to trade human bodies for rhetorical points.
eager to trade human bodies for rhetorical points.
There are a lot of people who have sacrificed their lives to defend their homes from invaders. A lot of people would say that’s about as noble of a goal as you can fight for and pretty fucking far from “rhetoric” when it’s a hostile army burning your homes and raping your daughters but hey, yah lets keep saying what’s best for the country and what we need to “give up” to get peace.
Don’t bother replying unless you want to keep showboating for others.
There are a lot of people who have sacrificed their lives to defend their homes from invaders.
That’s not some kind of virtue. Make the other fucker die for theirs, etc.
But once you’re dead, it’s not your land anymore. Telling tens of thousands of additional Ukrainians to die so the state can auction off a dead guy’s property to Jared Kushner’s holding company is fucked.
Don’t bother replying unless you want to keep showboating for others.
🚢
It’s Zelensky that says it, rumor has it Ukraine won’t give up land in exchange for peace
It’s not our decision to make how many people Ukraine is willing to sacrifice for their land. That’s THEIR decision.
The better question here is how many people is Russia willing to sacrifice for a war of conquest that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
It’s not our decision to make how many people Ukraine is willing to sacrifice
It clearly is, or you wouldn’t be telling them the terms for peace.
The better question here is how many people is Russia willing to sacrifice
They’re not the ones negotiating loss of territory. You gotta quit this “Well I’m rubber and your glue” line of reasoning.
It’s our decision whether we give them billions of dollars of weapons.
We don’t give them shit, we sell it to them on loan with interest. It’s all old hardware that we don’t use anymore. It’s a win win, our military budget goes down, they kill Russians. how do you not understand that 4 years into the war?
So, we’re trapping them in debt slavery so that we can steal their natural resources. They die, we profit. Win/Win
Also, it’s not like those profits go to us. They go to the manufacturers and their investors, with only some coming back in the form of wages. It’s mostly a way to take public dollars and then hand it out to political donors. Win/Win/Win
Fuck off tankie. Acting like you live in a country where you’re giving Ukraine any aid instead of being a fucking Soviet sucking pig. I’ve seen enough of your dumbass around Lemmy to know you don’t make any statement in good faith. So kindly fuck off.
Absolutely it is. We choose whether we live in a world where we defend freedom or where we appease bullies.
I guess for some people it’s an easier choice than for others.
Is that why Ukraine is over $100 billion in debt to its Western “allies”?
Putting people into debt slavery is a weird way to defend freedom…
Debt is a normal part of war, and Ukraine’s war debt is about a quarter of their peacetime GDP. Most of that has already been covered by the EU aid package last year.
Characterizing that as debt slavery is a pretty huge stretch.
At this scale those debts are a chain around their necks that can be used to control them.
As for the aid package, it merely covers half of the debt. On top of that? It’s conditional! Ukraine has to meet certain requirements to receive that aid: energy, border management, agricultural demining, and the development of a list of “strategic and essential” raw materials. Aside from demining that doesn’t sound like defending freedom, that sounds like they are trapping a client state into dependency so they can be exploited for primary production.
This has never been about freedom, I don’t know how anyone could ever believe it was.
Capitulating to an aggressor isn’t going to save lives.
Nobody in this thread seems interested in saving lives. It is entirely an argument over territorial control
What? I’m here telling you that if you want to save lives, don’t capitulate to the country killing everyone.
As any child knows, if you let a bully take your lunch money they’re just going to come back tomorrow.
I’m here telling you that if you want to save lives, don’t capitulate to the country killing everyone
That hasn’t proven out over the last 3 years. The death toll in Ukraine has significantly outrun every other Russian conflict since WW2.
As any child knows
When you think like a child, you get the results to match
Giving a country with a track record of violating treaties as long as Russia’s anything that lets them feel like they gained from the war in return for a treaty saying they’ll stop the war is going to cost more Ukrainian lives than continuing to fight, even to the last man. All a peace treaty like that achieves is vindicating Russia’s decision to violate the last treaty. It doesn’t stop the war, just pauses it while Russia rearms, so it can be even bloodier when it resumes than it would have been if it hadn’t paused. If Ukraine can’t make Russia lose, more Ukrainians (and more citizens of Russia’s other neighbours who are at risk of being next in line) survive if they make Russia’s victory pyrrhic so they learn that it isn’t profitable to invade their neighbours again.
Giving a country with a track record of violating treaties as long as Russia’s
Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post–Cold War Stalemate
The title of the book, Not One Inch, refers to James Baker’s famous statement to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would expand “not an inch” to the east.
A good book and worth a read, if you’re genuinely curious at the history leading to the current crisis.
But it’s a hard read for anyone who believes history started in 2014
Kinda seems like Ukraine are winning the war of attrition to me.
“How many people are you willing to throw into the meat grinder”
Yes us lemmy posters are all high ranking Ukrainian officials. Our moral inputs into this site dictate outcomes on the battle field and our opinions hold us accomplice to the slaughter. Putin is not responsible at all; it’s the people posting on the internet!
Yes us lemmy posters are all high ranking Ukrainian officials.
101st chairborne, to be sure. Tons of folks seem to think this war is a team sport that you just cheer at from the sidelines.
Nor should they. And they own their oil discoveries.
And nor should they, never give in to bullies.
Russia’s showing signs of desperation anyhow which is why they’re trying to push through an agreement. They can’t debase the currency much further, they don’t have the reserves or the GDP. Ukraine is in more the position strength here as they’ve spend their time building alliances which has been aided by Russian actions strengthening the resolve of Europeans.
If they really felt desperate, wouldn’t they show just a bit more flexibility in their demands?
If Putin shows weakness, Russian’s might start thinking he’ll give in to their demands.
Ah yes, but with Trump bending over backwards to accommodate Putin the Russians needn’t worry.
plus putin is also shoring up far-right european govt in the EU too.
so many of thier fuel stations are hit, its going to start affecting his 2 base of influence, moscow and st.pete, the last thing he wants is those people in the cities complaining,.
US here, and I wish we were one of those allies. You know, as we promised.
- In 1994, the United States, Russia, and Ukraine signed the Trilateral Statement, under which Ukraine committed to eliminate all nuclear weapons on its territory and join the NPT, in exchange for economic support and security assurances from the United States and Russia.
Yeah, would have been nice if the word (signature in fact!) of us government had meant anything (we knew russia never lives up to it)
We knew Russia wouldn’t. I’m just sad that we aren’t holding up our end of the bargain. I suspect we’d have support from other nations.
Sounds like the EU needs a nuclear weapon program. At least one warhead in every EU nation, and at least 10 in every bordering Russia.
And also an autonomous weapon program. Like Project Manhatthan, but for Skynet.
Unfortunately, this is just a stark lesson for any other country out there. Do not give up your nuclear weapons no matter what “guarantees” you get.
Isnt the lesson “develop nukes now”?
and security assurances from the United States and Russia.
The US pressured Ukraine to accept assurances and not guarantees. It matters which kind of guarantees are given.
Demand reparations, send all the Russians back to actual Russia and Putin to The Hague
I know this is mostly a fantasy by now, but in actual reality, Russia obviously needs to give Crimea back to Ukraine and then continue minding its own fucking business.
Has Russia in its various incarnations, ever minded its own business? They’ve been a pain basically since their inception. Mostly because they seem to have predilection for some variation of oppressing their own people and then using those oppressed people to oppress more people.
There was about a 15-year window when they had a democracy and that’s been it.
Really? So the invasions by Napoleon, by the WW1 victors, and by the Third Reich were all just Russia being a pain?
There was about a 15-year window when they had a democracy
Are you talking about the 90s and early 2000s, when Russia experienced a drop in life expectancy on par with WWII? When foreign capital pillaged the country with the explicit purpose of making an example of them?
Here’s a link to The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism. It helps explain how things got bad enough that Vladimir fucking Putin seems like the lesser evil to the people who lived through it.
ContinueStart
whos going to make them? until europe invades, im sorry but you kinda have to hope the us does something
Yeah, that’s the fantasy part.
You don’t reward a thief and murderer, you shoot them between the eyes. As a Dutchman, I wholeheartedly support shooting every uniformen Russian or allied you can find. Twice.
This sort of thinking is what the elites want…
If you apply your hate about the Russian invasion to all people of Russia, you make the job easier for Russian government to spread hate against others even more.
If people of countries would not hate each other, but only people responsible for war, there would simply be no war.
War only works by propaganda, without hate and fear mongering, there would be no wars.
You don’t reward a thief and murderer
We literally do and we do it regularly.
At this point, telling Russia to give the land back might as well be a land acknowledgement you read in between demanding Florida to back to the Cherokee and telling the Normans to leave England.
I wholeheartedly support shooting every uniformen Russian or allied you can find.
Well, quit wasting your time. Get down to Ukraine and win the war, then.
In all fairness, I think kost Russian soldiers aren’t there by much choice, Putin loves his meat grinder and has pulled well over a million Russians through it.
Yes, that is a problem that Russians should fix themselves, but still. Any soldiers surrendering should be treated well. Show them they’ve really been figuring on the wrong side
They do have a choice. When Russian frontline collapses in WWI, they started to make revolution in the Russia. Soldiers have all the guns, they have a choice, but they don’t use it or care to use it.
It is hard to revolt against a fascist state…
Alone, you have no change
There are horrible examples made with individuals who try
Organisation is made very hard and punishment is inhumane
People just want to live their lives, and if risks for revolution is so damn high, they can not afford to do it
It worked with the Nazis, it works with Russia and it will work with MAGA
If we don’t have strong protections against fascist takeover, they will do it and will block all counter movements while they are small
That is why they try to make antifa illegal, because active fighting against fascism is always needed, because the danger of a fascist group taking over is always ther
And fascism does not mean against jews, it means usage of power to suppress those with less power. It means slavering with extra steps.
That’s not what I was saying. Russian people have been made revolution before, which started from the soldiers tired of the war. I didn’t speak of the US military or people.
Most of the soldiers getting sent into the meat grinder are ethnic minorities from poor regions of Russia. They’re people that European Russians don’t care about.
putin is less likely to send muscovites or st.petersberg russians(aka white russians) thats where his influence is, if he starts to send those people, the people are going to riot.
Thanks for the archived link. 👍
Zelensky is a completely incompetent moron. He could have easily done a deal and avoided whole war. Now he’s gonna be exactly the same thing but with ruined economy and wasted lives.
This is what-if thinking. Right now the Russian are clearly showing disinterest in negotiating the end of the war, they are fully prepared to sacrifice more lives in order to gain territories, there is no reason to think they weren’t already at the start.
it’s delusional thinking, they took crimea…and they tried to to take more when they thought they could get away with, russians have been using the same playbook for centuries now. there are so many examples to pick from here showing this…give them anything and it just paints you as an easy target for more.
the real question (imo) is why hasnt someone just assassinated putin by now
there was barely resistance during obama when he took crimea, he was hoping biden was the same. his micalculated, covid helped indirectly, because everyone was basically home and paying attention to the news.
Because everyone close enough to assassinate Putin benefits from the regime. None of them are in their positions for altruistic reasons and all them them would face the gallows if Russia had real accountability. It’s why Coup attempts are frequently not launched by Generals.
My word, this is the stupidest thing I’ve read today
Nobody wants to accept that the celebrity comedian placeholder candidate who won on a generic protest vote years before the war started isn’t this generation’s Nelson Mandela.
I’m beginning to understand how the Ukrainians have lost to an army as incompetent and corrupt as the Russians.
Ohh you just took the crown for stupidest comment I’ve read today
The slow walking of Military Aid under Biden and the disruption of aid under Trump are the main reasons the Ukrainians haven’t done better. Most people are amazed they did as well against the Russian’s as they have.
Zelenskyy is a hero, the Churchill of our time. Your boss Pootang is a greedy, theiving, cowardly midget with a tiny penis, Boris.
Churchill? The guy who killed 4.2 million of Indians via famine? Who proclaimed fascism the antidote to the poison of communism?
I like Zelenskyy less than most billionaires, but I wouldn’t compare him to a genocidal ghoul like Churchill.
There is no scenario in which Russia gives up control of Crimea. It is simply too strategically important.
What about the scenario that they collapse within due to no economy? That’d lose crimea for them quickly.
Is there any serious analysis that anticipates that? I mean, a flurry of meteor strikes could also do it, I suppose.
Yes. Their oil production is way down due to the destruction of a lot of their refineries so fuel supplies are running low. They are also unable to produce enough amination for their tanks. So their tanks won’t go and can’t fire, hard to call that winning.
People have been saying this since week 2 of the war lmao
They lost a few percentage points of total refining capacity.
The strikes Ukraine made did disrupt a large percentage of the refineries, that’s true. But the strikes didn’t do a lot of damage and the refineries were brought back onine shortly.
The total annual production of those refineries was affected. But only something like 3% - 6%.
This week there are reports, plus lots of corroborating videos showing orcs running into battle without helmets or armor. They don’t seem to be doing great.
And yet Ukraine can’t seem to defend against them? Russian territory gains have been accelerating over the last 4 weeks. Pretty bad situation if Ukraine can’t defend against unarmored and unarmed soldiers
too much gas/oil that russia desperately needs.
Russia will come back and take it all, don’t give them an edge. Trump will be on TV whining how Ukraine rejected his really good peace offering.
they waited til the right time to take crimea, its almost always a dem president in office before he struck, he miscalculated with ukraine. its the same reason gop ruins the economy, they get blaming points, in this case crimea, ukraine so the reps get re-elected once again, and give russia pass when they are back in power.
When ever Trump is upset I’m a happy person.
And we should donate, as we should. And fight where we can.
Why should they?
Because the zone is a wasteland anyways, and the few that live there were pro Russian as far as I remember
If a part of your country doesn’t want to belong to you anymore, then it shouldn’t (like Taiwan or Hong Kong)
because the zone is a wasteland.
Only because of Russia. Imagine the implications of that mindset. Just bomb a place to shit them take it.
the few remaining are pro Russian.
False. Are you going off what Russia said?! Lol Russia killed, displaced, threatened, and lied about those votes.
If a part of your country doesn’t want to belong to you anymore, then it shouldn’t
We already established that’s built on a lie but even if that’s true that’s not a green light for Russia to invade.
lied about those votes.
Source?
You believe that an invading army that commits war crimes and comes from a country with no democracy is going to hold free and fair elections? Are you insane?
I’m getting USA vibes
Obviously it is something that means they can’t be fully trusted. Disregarding the results without searching for counter proof is dumb. This region was known for not being very pro Ukraine in the first place
Do you have any data suggesting otherwise? Before the invasion, those people weren’t happy with the anti-russian language laws passed by the central government or the fascist militias they wouldn’t stop.
Once again, you’re using a gaslighting argument called changing the argument. Russia should be allowed to invade Ukraine because a boarder region wants to leave? Even if that was true, the way Russia is going about claiming the region isn’t justified. If Russia cared so much they wouldn’t have turned the region into a wasteland. They wouldn’t have tried to take the capital. They wouldn’t be launching attacks well past the disputed area. Hell is you want to get specific, Russia wouldn’t have any right Crimea. But I guess you have the dame lies on hand for that region too.
Neither side has any interest in the well-being and prosperity of the people living in those regions, I just want the war to stop. Same position I’ve held since 2022 when the lines were mostly where they are, and the peace deal was mostly where it is, but millions were still in their homes and hundreds of thousands still alive.
The war ends when Russia respects Ukraine’s original post USSR fracturing boarders agreement because Ukraine had something like 80% of the USSR’s nukes. You want the war to end. STFU.
Russia will never agree to that, so you’re just advocating every last Ukrainian be sent to die in a meat grinder? Maybe if you send the Poles, Germans, and French to die too, Russia will run out of manpower and then you can have your borders.
The 2014 elections were actually pretty close in those areas. A month later the Russians invaded the Donbas though so there wasn’t any chance to be pro-Ukrainian after that. And then there’s the fact that people tend to not like like invading armies. I’m pretty sure anyone still in the area isn’t a fan of the people shelling them every day.
Also, it’s not a wasteland, it’s actually a pretty strategic area.
They were “honest” Russian elections
There is no such thing !
in 2014, the ukrainian govt was a pro-russian pm, he fled after the people revolted against him. oh one of trumps former cabinet was working with russia/ukraine at the time too.
The vast majority regions that Russia currently occupied/demanding were overwhelmingly pro-Ukrainian (opposing to Russian aggression) before the invasion. Or are you referring the annexation referendum or some vote results made under occupation by foreign military force? If you brutally invade a neighboring country and force its people to make an annexation referendum at gunpoint, surely the result will favor you, and you can invade other countries wherever you want like that.
Id like to hear your opinion on Crimea
Source?
The views and opinions of South-Eastern regions residents of Ukraine: April 2014 https://kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=302&page=1&y=2014&m=4
Thank you. I think there is some slight nuance here but these numbers certainly refute the narrative that the locals wanted to join Russia. Assuming the poll was conducted fairly. I’m not familiar with the agency behind it.
You’re wrong
Nice argument
Thx
Wrong, everyone pro Russian stayed or moved to the occupied Donbass area in 2014
So the U.S should give up Texas every time they get a hair up their ass and holler to secede?
C’mon dude. Be real.
Honestly? I say if Texas voted, let 'em go. Let Abbot even be the Confederate President, then wait until Mexico shows their displeasure.
The US would never allow it. Too many military resources in Texas.
Because he didn’t say thank you.
Nor should they.
Never bow to bullies.
Bully the bullies back.
That’s the President of Ukraine , not like taco from the states .
