Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he no longer wants to push for Ukraine’s NATO membership. This integration process remains one of the main reasons invoked by the Kremlin to justify the invasion of its country.
Another apparent openness towards Moscow, he says he is ready for a “compromise” on the status of the separatist territories in eastern Ukraine, whose independence Russian President Vladimir Putin unilaterally recognized just before launching his war. February.
“As for NATO, I tempered my position on this issue some time ago, when we understood” that “NATO was not ready to accept Ukraine”, a- he said Havein an interview broadcast Monday evening by the American channel ABC. “The Alliance is afraid of anything controversial, and of a confrontation with Russia,” he lamented. He added that he does not want to be the president of a “country that begs on its knees” for such a membership.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and is waging war in this former Soviet republic. Moscow says it wants a guarantee that Kiev will never enter NATO, a transatlantic alliance created to protect Europe from the threat of the USSR at the start of the Cold War and which then gradually expanded to the gates of Russia. The Kremlin considers these enlargements to be threatening, as well as the military posture of the Western Allies near the Russian borders.
President Putin also recognized shortly before starting his invasion two pro-Russian separatist “republics” in eastern Ukraine at war since 2014 with the forces of Kiev. He is now demanding that their independence also be recognized by Ukraine. Asked about this Russian requirement, President Zelensky said he was open to dialogue on ABC. “I am talking about security guarantees. I think that with regard to these temporarily occupied territories”, “which have only been recognized by Russia”, “we can discuss and find a compromise on the future of these territories”, he explained.
“What is important to me is how the people who are in these territories and who want to be part of Ukraine are going to live”, he continued, considering that the question was “more complex than simply the to acknowledge “.
Speeches with historical echoes
A few hours later, in front of the British Parliament, President Zelensky delivered a moving speech by videoconference. “We will fight until the end,” he said on Tuesday, echoing a speech given by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in June 1940, in the midst of World War II.
The Ukrainian president read his text in front of a packed House of Commons, listened to attentively by the deputies who then rose to an ovation.
Since the first day of the Russian invasion, “we haven’t slept. We all fought for our country, with our army,” he said. “We won’t give up and we won’t lose,” he added, telling the story of the Russian invasion day by day. “We will fight to the end, at sea, in the air. We will continue to fight for our land, no matter what, in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets,” he said.
While thanking Western countries for their sanctions against Russia, Zelensky noted that NATO had not granted his request to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. “But please increase the pressure of sanctions against this country. And please recognize this country as a terrorist state. And please make our skies safe,” he pleaded.
In response, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that “never before in all our centuries of parliamentary democracy has the House listened to such an address”. President Zelensky “touched the hearts of everyone in this Assembly”, he added, promising that the West was determined to continue its arms deliveries to Ukraine and its sanctions against Russia.
On March 5, Mr. Zelensky also addressed the elected members of the American Congress to ask for financial aid and for Soviet-made planes which the countries of Eastern Europe still have and which the Ukrainian pilots have mastered. The president called on this occasion for a toughening of economic sanctions against Russia, in particular an embargo on imports of Russian oil and gas, which American President Joe Biden decreed on Tuesday.