Ukraine has reacted with outrage to comments by longtime US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on urgent peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
According to a report by the AFP news agency, Kissinger told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “ideally” the Ukrainian border would be restored as it once was.
Kissinger: Russia should not be underestimated
Kissinger has appealed to the government in Kiev to give up territory and start negotiations “before there are upheavals and tensions that are not easy to overcome”. He therefore warned the West not to intervene even more in the war. One should not underestimate Russia’s position of power within Europe. If the old borders are restored, it is no longer in the interests of Ukraine’s freedom to continue the war.
“The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins. Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other,” according to the elderly statesman.
“The European Union must recognize that its bureaucratic dilatoriness and subordination of the strategic element to domestic politics in negotiating Ukraine’s relationship to Europe contributed to turning a negotiation into a crisis.” He repeated that Ukraine should not join NATO, a position he took seven years ago.
Social media users rooting for Ukraine were beside themselves with fury.
Zelensky’s team is seething with anger
Ukrainian presidential adviser Alexey Arestovich chose to use obscenities to put an end to any notion of peace talks: “Go fuck yourselves with such proposals, you dumb fucks, to trade Ukrainian territory a little bit! Are you fucking crazy? Our children are dying, soldiers are stopping shells with their own bodies, and they are telling us how to sacrifice our territories. This will never happen,”Arestovich said in an interview on Wednesday.
Zelensky himself said on Wednesday that Ukraine would not stop the war until the Russian President “understands reality”. It is not clear what the Ukrainian leader was alluding to after the mass surrender of his soldiers in Mariupol recently. Speaking to an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he said that Ukraine would fight until it recovered all of Russian-speaking territory.
The Ukrainian President said that Moscow should withdraw its troops back to the lines in place before Russia began its invasion on February 24. “That might be a first step towards talks,” he said.
On Monday he had called for tougher sanctions against Russia and invited international companies shunning Russia to set up operations in the economically already devastated Ukraine.
Advisor to the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, also interpreted this statement by Kissinger as an appeal for a cession of territory to Russia. On Telegram on Wednesday he tore into the “pro-Russian lobbyists in Europe.”
“We do not sell our citizens, territories or sovereignty. This is a clear red line. Ukrainian society has paid a terrible price and will not allow anyone to even take a step in this direction – no government and no country,” Podoliak said.
It’s a good thing that the Ukrainians in the trenches did not have time to listen to the “Davos scaremongers”. They are “a little busy defending freedom and democracy,” he tweeted. He also posted a photo of Kissinger shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin.