Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday criticized former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for suggesting earlier this week that Ukraine cede some territory to Russia in the name of peace.
In a speech on Wednesday, Zelensky said Kissinger “emerges from the deep past and says that a piece of Ukraine should be given to Russia” and that “Kissinger’s calendar is not 2022, but 1938,” a reference to the Munich Agreement, which allowed Nazi Germany to annex lands in western Czechoslovakia.
“Behind all these geopolitical speculations of those advising Ukraine to give something away to Russia, the ‘big geopolitics’ are always reluctant to see normal people,” Zelensky said. “Millions of those who really live in the territory intend to exchange for the illusion of peace. You always have to see people. “
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday, 98-year-old Kissinger said that “peace talks must begin” between Moscow and Kyiv and that “ideally, the dividing line should return to the status quo.” .
Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine in 2014 and encouraged separatist movements in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to the east. Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the regions independent before moving troops to Ukraine and launching a large-scale assault.
As Russia has at least temporarily reduced its ambitions to seize Kyiv, many believe that Putin would at least want to secure control of some of the eastern regions before the end of the war.
Zelensky said on Wednesday that he would ignore “those in a hurry for another meeting with the dictator,” referring to Putin.
“No matter what the Russian state does, there is always someone who says, ‘Let’s take their interests into account.’ This year in Davos it was heard again “, he said. “Despite thousands of Russian missiles hitting Ukraine. Despite tens of thousands of Ukrainians killed.”
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Russia invaded Ukraine in part because Putin feared expanding the scope of the 30-member NATO security bloc, to which Ukraine had shown a growing interest in joining. However, more than three months after the war, Putin’s aggression has inspired the highly secular Nordic nations of Finland and Sweden to join the Western security alliance.
After a series of Russian losses halted the offensive, NATO has said that Ukraine can win the war against Russia.
Zelensky has vowed that Ukraine will fight “until it recovers all its territories” and in his last speech said that “all those defending the state are resisting the extremely fierce offensive of Russian troops in the east.”