Volodymyr Zelensky urges Vladimir Putin to sit down and negotiate with him. In the opinion of the Ukrainian president, “there is no other way to stop this war” than to speak directly with his Russian counterpart.
This was stated this Thursday, on the eighth day of the invasion, urging Putin to sit down with him, but “not 30 meters away”alluding to the talks between the Russian president and Emmanuel Macron in the Kremlin, separated by a long table.
“I’m your neighbor”, “I don’t bite” or “I’m not a terrorist“, have been some of the words with which Zelensky has challenged Putin, whom he has even asked “what is he afraid of”.
Zelensky spoke in this way while the delegations of both countries met again in Belarus to negotiate, a meeting in which the parties agreed to hold a third round of talks in the coming days and reached an agreement on the creation of humanitarian corridorsas well as for a possible ceasefire around them.
Also, the Ukrainian leader has sent a message to russian soldiers in the country, whom he has urged to go home: “Tell your commanders that you want to live and not die,” said the Ukrainian president, who has warned that “the invaders will only receive the fierce rejection of the Ukrainians”.
Ukraine is showing constant images of captured russian soldiers and Zelenski – who has assured that these “only say one thing, they do not know why they are here” – even offers Russian mothers to arrive escorted to Kiev to pick up their imprisoned military children. “Take them home,” he said.
In addition, he has ensured that “all” lines of defense still stand. In a speech picked up by the Ukrainian press and quoted by Europa Press, Zelensky stated that Russia has been forced “to change tactics”. “The enemy is not successful in any of the strategic directions,” he continued, before noting that Russian troops are “depressed” and “doomed”.
Zelensky has accused Russia of going to Ukraine to “destroy its cities, destroy its people, take away everything that is dear to them.” “There’s no weapon you wouldn’t use against us, against the free citizens of Ukraine. And now you tell your propagandists that you are going to send the so-called humanitarian columns to Ukraine”, he has sentenced.
“We have survived in our history and in our country to two world wars, three famines, the Holocaust, the Babi Yar massacre, the Great Purge, the Chernobyl explosion, the occupation of Crimea and the war in the east of our country”, the president, who has clarified that, although Ukraine is not large or does not have nuclear weapons, it has “its people and its land”.
“We have nothing to lose except our own freedom and dignity. For us, that is the greatest treasure”, he continued, noting that “they are standing”. “If someone thinks that, having overcome all this, we Ukrainians are scared, broken or give up, they simply do not know anything about us, about Ukraine,” he concluded.
Source: Lasexta
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