Volodymyr Zelensky has already resigned himself to the new phase that Ukraine is entering after Donald Trump’s victory in the US, given the possibility that he will withdraw aid and precipitate a negotiation with Vladimir Putin. The message sent by the Ukrainian president and the EU is that kyiv must come to this negotiation with the greatest possible strength. That is why Zelensky does not want a ceasefire that would make the conflict chronic and demands “security guarantees” from the allies for the post-war stage. His proposal is that these security guarantees be provided by NATO, but he is aware that this scenario is very complicated.
“We need a real plan,” Zelensky implored the EU leaders with whom he met this Thursday after holding several bilateral meetings the day before, including with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and an informal meeting with the secretary NATO general and several heads of government, such as Olaf Scholz (Germany), Giorgia Meloni (Italy) or Donald Tusk (Poland), among others, with the idea of thinking about the next steps.
One of the warnings that Zelensky has sent to the EU, but also to Trump, who has advocated for a ceasefire in Ukraine to begin negotiations, is that Vladimir Putin would end up not respecting it: “We need coordinated efforts to achieve a lasting peace, not just a pause in the fighting, which Putin wants to buy time.”
“Imagine that we have a ceasefire, everyone is happy and you can imagine that Putin returns in two months, six months, a year or two. Who will lose? “Everyone,” Zelensky expressed in a press conference after two days of meetings in Brussels in which he emphasized the need for “a real plan”, a “strong position” and, above all, “unity between the EU and USA”. “We cannot live with a frozen conflict,” was another of Zelensky’s warnings.
The idea that is flying over the EU is the sending of peace troops to the Ukrainian front line to guarantee the ceasefire or the terms of peace that Macron has proposed and that for now divides the EU. However, it is another of the possibilities to which Zelensky resigns himself. “We support your initiative, but we need to develop all the details about the contingent. We’re just saying that this could be part of the security guarantees. Of course, for us, the most important security guarantee is NATO,” he responded. What the Ukrainian wants is Trump’s support because, as he has recognized, without his support, European aid is insufficient. “Welcome, Donald,” he said about his return to the White House.
“He’s crazy,” Zelensky said about Putin, who this Thursday challenged Trump to a “duel” between the new Russian hypersonic weapons and Western missile defense systems, the setting of which, he said, would be the Ukrainian capital, kyiv. “I also think he thinks he is crazy,” added the Ukrainian, who assured that “he is dangerous for everyone” because “he doesn’t care what human life means.” Thus, he recalled that thousands of Russian soldiers have died in the conflict in Ukraine, a front to which Putin, he said, has sent his entire army even with troops from other countries, such as North Korea.
Regarding those 12,000 men that he claims to have identified at the front, Zelensky has said that they carry documentation from the Russian Federation and that “they are not identified” because “they are burning their faces” so that they are not recognized.
For Zelensky, the fact that Putin turns to his allies and has left other conflicts, such as Syria or the withdrawal of Wagner’s mercenaries from Africa, demonstrates his “weakness.” “That’s why I tell our partners to believe us, we see their weakness. It is only strong because it can talk about nuclear weapons and because it uses missiles, but it cannot even build these missiles without China. That’s why what we need is to impose tough sanctions and do our job well,” he concluded.
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