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As the year comes to an end, maneuvering around possible peace negotiations is gaining momentum, with General Kellog – US President Donald J. Trump’s Ukraine envoy – planning a trip to Kiev even before the inauguration.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is keeping himself in the headlines with a mixture of realistic admissions and propaganda pushes.
Yesterday, Zelensky admitted that Ukraine doesn’t have the military strength to retake territory that Russia has conquered.
But, he insists, Kiev will not recognize these territories as belonging to Russia.
Politico reported:
“’Legally, we cannot give up our territories. This is prohibited by the constitution. But let’s not use such big words. Russia actually controls part of our territory today’, Zelensky said in response to a question as to how far Kiev is prepared to compromise to end the war following Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion.”
‘If today we don’t have the strength to win back all of our territory, maybe the West will find the strength to put Putin in his place … at the [negotiating] table and diplomatically deal with this war’, he added, while again lamenting that Ukraine would be in a different situation today had the West given Kiev all it asked for earlier in the war.
On the other hand, Zelensky said, Ukraine will never recognize its occupied territories as Russian. ‘This is not about compromise. This means he [Putin] will get away with everything again. This is impossible’.”
The problem is that the longer Ukraine takes to finally negotiate, the bigger the territorial losses it faces.
“Russia currently occupies some 18 percent of Ukrainian territory (111,677 square kilometers), including Crimea and parts of the Donbas area in eastern Ukraine that the Kremlin has occupied since 2014, according to Ukrainian monitoring project DeepState.”
Russian forces have conquered over 190 settlements this year – and the rate is accelerating, not slowing down – with rapid advances in Donetsk, and also victories in Kharkov, Kherson and Zaporozhie.
Four oblasts – Zaporozhie, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson – have voted to belong to the Russian Federation, so Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Kiev that it will have to withdraw from all four regions if it wants to start peace.
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