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.”
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.