The sensational news of the unconditional surrender of . has been circulating for several hours Volodymyr Zelensky: the Ukrainian president would now be one step away from withdrawing his troops, ready to give up Crimea and the Donbass to the invader’s Russia Vladimir Putin.
It’s a shame that this sensational news is only true for the Italian media because, according to the main foreign newspapers, from BBC alla Cnnyes The World at the He does, there is no trace of any of this. The most apodictic ones are the Truth and the Daily factoften on politically opposite sides, but this time both pleased in underlining the imminent Ukrainian defeat, but even the most sober Republic speaks of a “strategic turning point” on Kiev’s part and even the ANSA speaks of surrender, albeit in quotation marks.
How is this possible? It all starts from a phrase extrapolated from the long interview that Zelensky gave to the French newspaper The Parisianan interview in which he does not appear submissive at all, reiterating, on the contrary, the need to “put Putin back in his place”, a concept which also gives the title to the entire interview.
Here it is “incriminated” phrase: «Donbass and Crimea today are de facto controlled by the Russians and we do not have the strength to reconquer them, we can only count on diplomatic pressure of the international community.” Reading these lines one can legitimately think that the Ukrainian president is about to surrender across the board, a bit like Vercingetorix did who knelt, proud but defeated, before Julius Caesar after the battle of Alesia. But Zelensky’s sentence follows another which says something completely different: «We cannot give up our territories. We can’t do that because it’s the same Ukrainian Constitution that prevents us.” And then, a few lines later: «The country has been fighting for its sovereignty for a long time. No matter the number of presidents or prime ministers who would like to immediately decree an end to the war, we simply will not give in, we will not abandon our independence.”
For Zelensky, the greatest danger in this phase lies in «freezing the war and Russia making an agreement» because this approach «would incite other dictators to do the same with total impunity and would offer Putin the possibility of returning to Chechnya, Georgia , in Moldova”. Ukraine’s diversity therefore consists in refusing to give in to the arrogance of the Kremlin and react: “For the first time in almost thirty years of power there is a country that resists Vladimir Putin.” But it is also and above all an existential question for his nation and his people: “If we don’t stop him he will continue to destroy us because for him Ukraine doesn’t exist.”
When Zelensky claims he doesn’t have the military capacity to recover the territories occupied by Russian forces, he is only photographing a balance of power, but he has never let it be understood that he will raise white flag to meet the invaders, responsible for war crimes, the bombing of cities, the massacres of civilians: «We will use diplomacy so that the war ends as soon as possible, but we do not forgive Putin because we respect international law, it cannot be legitimized employment. Whoever is guilty must answer for his actions because there is no victory without justice.”
Again yesterday in a press conference at the end of the EU summit in which he participated, Zelensky pressed the European allies and the United States (waiting for Donald Trump to take office in the White House) to put more pressure on Moscow by setting out its conditions for making the Kremlin surrender: Kiev’s membership of NATO and to the European Union, new military supplies for its army which needs modern air defense systems, tightening of economic sanctions and use of assets seized from the Russians for the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine such as schools, hospitals, and roads.
Conditions that the Kremlin will never, ever want to accept. Also because Putin currently has no intention of negotiating anything with his opponent: “We are ready to negotiate but with legitimate Ukrainian authorities only if there are elections in Kiev.”
