Post #5129

🔠🅰️🔠🔠2️⃣ But Zelensky told me that he would rather take no deal at all than force his people to accept a bad one. Even after four years of intense warfare, he says he is prepared to fight on if that’s what it takes to secure a dignified and lasting peace. “Ukraine is not losing,” he insisted emphatically when I asked him to assess his position on the battlefield. Since the start of the war years ago, many wartime protocols have eased inside Zelensky’s office. The chairs and bicycle racks that I remember barricading the doors against an expected Russian onslaught in the early days of the war have been cleared away. The lights in the hallways are on, freeing the staff from the need to shuffle around with flashlights. By inertia, some vestiges remain of the awful weeks in 2022 when enemy forces stood at the edge of Kyiv. “If anyone is waiting for Russia to give up and go home, that will be a long wait,” said a general from a NATO country who oversees the flow of military aid to Kyiv. “It’s not happening.” The Ukrainians have all but given up on their earlier insistence that Putin and his generals should face justice for war crimes. Zelensky has agreed to meet Putin just about anywhere but Moscow, with no preconditions. Two of his advisers told me that Ukraine may be ready to accept the hardest concession of all: giving up control of land in the eastern Donetsk region. To legitimize such a compromise, they have considered holding a referendum on the peace plan this spring, allowing Ukrainians to vote on a deal that includes the loss of territory. They could couple it with a presidential election, in the hopes of giving Zelensky a fresh mandate for the first time since 2019. Zelensky said he would be fine with that approach because it would help increase turnout and make the results more difficult for the Russians to question. But again, he told me, it had to be the right deal. “I don’t think we should put a bad deal up for a referendum,” he said. The idea of holding elections during the war, he said, came from the Russians, “because they want to get rid of me.” #zelensky#putin#elections#ukraine 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸