The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, rejected this Friday (06/14/2024) the proposal of Vladimir Putin, who offered a ceasefire in exchange for kyiv renouncing its membership in NATO and ceding the Ukrainian territories partially occupied by the invaders. The Ukrainian president compared Putin’s message, “an ultimatum”, with the actions of the Nazi regime and Adolf Hitler.
“We see this revival of Nazism. It is a new wave, a Russian Nazism. Everything Putin says, giving them a part of our territories that they have occupied, and also those that we liberated… are regions of our country. He says that he will stop and that There will not be a frozen conflict, but these are the same messages that Hitler made,” the Ukrainian president declared to the Italian channel Sky TG24.
Zelensky added that “Hitler used to say ‘give me a part of Czechoslovakia and I’ll stop’, but no. Then came Poland, the occupation of all of Europe, and you know that this wave of Nazism will not stop.” Not only the president of Ukraine reacted. with disbelief. The Secretary General of NATO and the United States also showed their skepticism regarding the proposal of the leader of the Russian regime.
“Putin is not in a position to dictate to Ukraine what it should do”
The US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, assured that Putin is not in a position to order anything to Ukraine. “Putin is not in a position to dictate to Ukraine what it must do to achieve peace,” he stressed after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. “Putin has illegally occupied sovereign Ukrainian territory,” he recalled.
Austin indicated that “that is exactly the type of behavior we don’t want to see.” “We don’t want to see the leader of a country wake up one day and decide that he wants to erase borders and annex his neighbor’s territory. “That is not the world any of us want to live in,” he commented, stressing that the head of the Kremlin “can end this war today,” an “unjust” invasion that “he started without provocation” and that has cost Russia “hundreds of thousands of troops killed or wounded.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also reacted, pointing out that the proposal to declare a ceasefire in exchange for territories is not an initiative for peace, but for “more aggression and occupation”, and stated that it is not done ” in good faith”. He added that Putin’s plan “demonstrates, in a way, that Russia’s goal is to control Ukraine,” which is “a blatant violation of international law and that is why allies continue to support Ukraine.”
Likewise, the advisor to the Ukrainian presidential office Mijailo Podoliak rejected the offer, which he described as “highly offensive”, since it is not a peace proposal, but “the standard package (of demands) of the aggressor.”
“Point by point, the ‘Russian Federation proposal’ consists of: 1. Give us your territories. 2. Give up your sovereignty and cease to have an entity. 3. Give up your protection (without membership or alliances),” wrote Podoliak , who also recalled that Putin hopes that international sanctions will be lifted in exchange for an agreement of this type.
DZC (Sky TG24, EFE, AFP)
