Zelensky assures public of no capitulation for latest time

Ukrainian President Zelensky assured the Ukrainian
public for the latest time on Oct. 11 that he won’t capitulate Ukraine’s
national interests to Russian geopolitical demands. “Believe me, I already have
an allergy to the word ‘capitulation.’ And I want to assure everyone for the
latest time – there won’t be any surrender of Ukraine’s national interests.
That’s not what I am about and not what Ukraine is about,” he said in a speech
in Odesa.

Zelensky acknowledged that he promised to end the war
in Donbas and renew Ukraine’s territorial integrity. “All of ours, all of my
personal efforts are aimed at this for 24 hours a day,” he said. He added that
there should be a full ceasefire, the return of all war prisoners, the removal
of foreign military formations and renewing control of the state border.

The majority of Ukrainians, or about 56%, are against
granting special status to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and fixating this in
the Constitution, as being demand by the Russian government, according to an
October poll. About 63% of the public opposes Ukraine’s federalization, which
is all being sought by the Putin administration. About 59% are against
abandoning Ukraine’s EU integration and about 54% are against sacrificing
Ukraine’s NATO integration. The poll was conducted by the Razumkov Center for
Economic and Political Research between Oct. 4 and 9 involving 2,500
respondents.

Zenon Zawada: We don’t
doubt the Zelensky administration is doing all it can to fulfill the Minsk
Accords, and is willing to consider measures that opponents will consider to be
capitulation. But ultimately, it won’t matter because we are also confident
that Putin won’t agree to anything short of capitulation in fulfilling the
Minsk Accords, which means that Zelensky will have to break his repeated
promises to the public otherwise. But that also won’t matter ultimately because
we believe that Russian President Putin is aware that fulfilling the Minsk
Accords will be more trouble than they’re worth. So we believe Putin will extend
the warfare with the goal of discrediting the Zelensky administration, and with
the greater goal of further destabilizing Ukrainian statehood.

As for the poll results, we believe they reflect
just how the Ukrainian public is utterly disoriented and has been led stray by
populist politics about the war in Donbas. On the one hand, the public voted
for Zelensky largely motivated by his promise to do everything to end the
warfare. On the other hand, the public is not willing to make the sacrifices
necessary to end the war, whether by waging a real, full-scale war with Russia
or by capitulating to Russian demands. We believe the Russian leadership is
aware of this disorientation and will exploit it even further to fully
demoralize the Ukrainian public and undermine its trust in state institutions.