Volodymyr Zelensky has urged Russian aggressor Vladimir Putin to end his illegal attack and negotiate directly with Ukraine’s comic turned wartime president, warning that otherwise, Russia will take several generations to recover.
In an evening video address to the country outside the Presidential Office on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky also blamed Russian forces for deliberately causing a humanitarian disaster to pressure Kyiv into yielding to Vladimir Putin’s demands.
Appealing to Vladimir Putin to hold direct talks with him as Kremlin troops surrounded Ukraine’s capital, he said that they have always insisted on negotiations. That they offered dialogue, offered solutions for peace. Not just for 23 days of aggression.
He said that he just wanted everyone to hear him now, especially Moscow, and that the time had come for a meeting, that it was now time to talk. It was time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be such that it will take them several generations to recover.
Ukraine and the West claim that Russia’s invasion is struggling in part due to fierce Ukrainian resistance, inadequate planning and low morale among Russian forces, and according to one US intelligence estimate, 7,000 Russian troops including four generals have already been killed, more than the number of American troops killed in either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars at 4,825 and 3,576 respectively, and between 14,000 and 21,000 troops have been wounded in the fighting.
The estimated Russian death toll is of a scale comparable to that of the Batte of Iwo Jima, where 6,852 troops were killed and 19,000 were injured during five weeks of fighting Japanese forces in the most intense phase of the Pacific theatre of World War Two.
Ukraine’s military has also suffered heavy casualties, likely to be much higher than the 1,300 troops which Kyiv has confirmed as killed.
According to Ukraine’s military, Russia has lost 466 tanks, 115 helicopters, 914 vehicles, 95 aircraft, 213 artillery systems, 44 anti-aircraft weapons and 60 fuel tanks. Russia hasn’t responded to Kyiv’s latest estimates, and the data couldn’t be independently confirmed.
The Kremlin has insisted that Ukraine renounced any ambitions to join NATO, be neutral along the lines of Sweden and Austria, recognise Crimea as Russian territory and recognise the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent territories.
Vladimir Putin’s lapdog Sergei Lavrov said neutrality was taking centre stage and that Moscow and Kyiv were near to agreeing on the wording of an agreement on NATO. But Kyiv vetoed the proposal and instead called for a global security guarantee among Western partners, including potentially Britain, who will support Ukraine if it’s invaded again.
Negotiations are a game to Vladimir Putin, along with his toys of armageddon.
Vladimir Putin has invaded the sovereign country of Ukraine, and the world is standing by whilst Volodymyr Zelensky and his brace soldiers and courageous citizens fight NATO’s war for them.
Ukraine is an old historic autonomous sovereign country of 45 million inhabitants, but now Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine with his despotic warmongering and perpetrating war crimes that will scorch this earth with his destruction of poor Ukraine.
It’s time for Vladimir Putin, in the finest Stalinist tradition to call back his defeated forces and skedaddle back to mother Russia, but sadly this man loves the cameras and the attention, and of course, Vladimir Putin will not want to lose face, so we can only speculate his next move.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 