Zelensky Likens Surrender Of Territories To End The War With Efforts To Make Peace With Nazi Germany

Presiden Volodymyr Zelensky. (Wikimedia Commons/President Of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday flatly rejected proposals for Kiev to cede territory and make concessions to end the war with Russia.

Zelensky said the proposal was an attempt to make peace with Nazi Germany as happened in 1938.

The angry comments of Zelensky and a senior official came as Ukrainian forces faced new attacks in the two eastern regions partly controlled by Russian-speaking separatists in 2014.

The editorial board of the New York Times said on May 19 that a negotiated peace might require Kiev to make some tough decisions, given that a decisive military victory was unrealistic.

And former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger this week suggested at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Ukraine should let Russia keep Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

"No matter what the Russian state does, you will always find someone who says 'Let's consider its interests'," Zelensky said in a late-night video speech.

"You get the impression that Kissinger doesn't have 2022 on his calendar, but 1938, and that he thinks he's speaking to an audience not in Davos but in Munich at the time."

In 1938, Britain, France, Italy, and Germany signed a treaty in Munich that gave Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler land in then-Czechoslovakia as part of an unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to abandon further territorial expansion.

"Maybe the New York Times also wrote something similar in 1938. But I remind you, it's 2022," Zelensky said.

"Those who advise Ukraine to give something to Russia, these 'great geopolitical figures', have never seen the little people, the little Ukrainians, the millions of people living in the territory they propose in exchange for an imaginary peace."

Italy and Hungary have urged the European Union to call for an explicit ceasefire in Ukraine and peace talks with Russia, putting them at odds with other EU member states determined to take a hard line against Moscow.

Earlier, in angry criticism, Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said several European countries clearly wanted Ukraine to make concessions to Putin.

"No one will trade a gram of our sovereignty or a millimeter of our territory," he said in a video statement posted online.

"Our children are dying, soldiers are being crushed by mortars, and they are telling us to sacrifice territory. Get lost. That will never happen."

The Russian foreign ministry spokesman earlier said Italy's peace plan for Ukraine was a "fantasy".

"You cannot supply Ukraine with weapons with one hand and make plans for a peaceful settlement of the situation with the other," Maria Zakharova said at her weekly briefing, referring to the Italian initiative.

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio outlined the plan last week. The Kremlin said on Tuesday it had not seen the initiative but hoped to receive it through diplomatic channels.

Zakharova said of the reported proposal: "If they hope that the Russian Federation will take advantage of any plans from the West, then they don't understand much."