Moderating breaking news thread, conjecture on assassination belong elsewhere.
Is Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreeing that Ukraine will lose territories as a compromise to end the war?
I suspect that this is badly worded. I think Ukraine is only agreeing to freeze the lines and begin peace talks.
Guardian live feed
I think maybe he’s cottoned onto the fact that he can agree to just about any terms for negotiation short of total capitulation. Putin isn’t going to accept or abide by anything else, and Ukraine can point to that as further proof that they’re not serious about trying to end the war in any other shape, form or fashion.
It could be that Zelenskyy has made the calculation that Ukraine can build up their forces more rapidly than Russia could should there be a pause in the hostilities, or maybe that Ukrainian soldiers would benefit more than Russian soldiers from taking a break from direct action. Given that a larger percentage of Ukrainian troops are seeing active front line combat than Russian troops are, that is almost certainly the case. If so, a pause would be of more benefit to Ukraine than Russia.
He’s right, as long as Ukraine maintains the support of the EU (aka NATO sans the U.S.).
In the long run, Russia can’t win against Europe. I’m worried that if Putin takes this deal, he will do so thinking that he can dry up Ukraine’s support in Europe with Russia no longer being a direct at-war threat from the East.
I’m not sure he (ETA: Putin) would be wrong about that.
I seems that Zelenskyy has learned to avoid publicly disagreeing with Trump. Zelenskyy wants to keep the military aid flowing to Ukraine.
Putin tends to make inflammatory statements that disagree with American interests.
Maybe that will work to Ukraine’s advantage.
Zelenskyy must feel the strain of walking that tightrope. He has to represent Ukraine’s interests and still avoid another public spat with Trump
Is Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreeing that Ukraine will lose territories as a compromise to end the war?
What Zelenskyy is doing is agreeing that Russia has de facto control of the territory they control but not agreeing that it is legally Russian territory.
This serves two purposes. In the short term, it is something of a face-saving technique in that it allows him to say he is allowing Russia to keep the territory but still not legally conceding it.
In the long term, if Russia were ever to collapse again. Something that it has done twice in the last 110 years. It would provide the legal pretext for Ukraine to get the land back.
Only, that will not work in the sense that Ukraine may be able to continue the war at some more favourable time.
The European countries supporting Ukraine’s have a solid majority of their population in favour of that because Ukraine defends itself against a war of aggression. Russia is unambiguously seen as the aggressor.
If there is an armistice in place and some years later Ukraine chooses to resume hostilities, that support would evaporate because a large majority of European electorates would see Ukraine as the aggressor. Support for wars of choice is not a thing in Europe (something that a lot of people in the US did not seem to be able to understand in 2003).
And they are next. Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, etc. all all next on Stali.… err I mean Putin shopping list, He was stated he is going to recreate the old Russian empire, which includes Alaska I will note. Also most of the ‘Stans.
No surprise here, I suppose, but even so, the depravity is Stalinesque:
I love recycling. I guess they’re collecting horse tails for the nets. That must require thousands of horses.
Doesn’t matter because Ukraine is getting used nets that have little value.
The article seems like it might have been written in part by AI. It seems odd, for example, that they describe the amount of nets donated so far using kilometers rather than kilograms or number of individual nets. That being the case, I think what they are using is hair collected by brushing horses, not entire tails from (presumably) horses that have been slaughtered.
I don’t think that odd. With fishing nets, and their new purpose, the distance they extend would be a more natural concept to measure than either weight or the number of nets.
Except that, on a brief google search, horse tails used to be used for fishing lines, but replaced by plastic now.
I know a lot of foreign officials travel to Kiev by the rail line from Poland.
But, I remember reading at the beginning of the war that Russia’s military supplies are extremely dependent on railways.