{"id":1479340,"date":"2024-07-25T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1479340"},"modified":"2024-07-25T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T11:30:00","slug":"kiev-mayor-klitschko-speculated-that-zelensky-might-agree-to-territorial-compromises-with-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/kiev-mayor-klitschko-speculated-that-zelensky-might-agree-to-territorial-compromises-with-russia\/1479340\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiev Mayor Klitschko Speculated That Zelensky Might Agree To Territorial Compromises With Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kiev Mayor Klitschko Speculated That Zelensky Might Agree To Territorial Compromises With Russia<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko, who\u2019s emerged as\u00a0one of Zelensky\u2019s top rivals<\/a>\u00a0over the past year, speculated in an interview with Italy\u2019s\u00a0Corriere Della Serra<\/a>\u00a0over the weekend that the Ukrainian leader might agree to territorial compromises with Russia. In his words, \u201cWill he\u2026consider a territorial compromise with Putin?…Zelensky will probably have to resort to a referendum. I don’t think he can reach such painful and important agreements on his own without popular legitimacy.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Klitschko also echoed Atlantic Council senior fellow Adrian Karatnycky\u2019s demand from mid-December for Zelensky to create a \u201cgovernment of national unity<\/a>\u201d by suggesting that this could help disperse responsibility for unpopular decisions like mobilization and thus ease their implementation. His interview couldn\u2019t have been more perfectly timed since it coincided with the signals that Ukraine sent over the past week about its newfound semi-seriousness in reviving peace talks with Russia as explained\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To summarize for the reader\u2019s convenience, the US\u2019\u00a0political<\/a>\u00a0uncertainty<\/a>, the Ukrainian Conflict\u2019s\u00a0military-strategic dynamics<\/a>\u00a0continuing to favor Russia, and the\u00a0growing attractiveness<\/a>\u00a0of China as a mediator combined to influence Zelensky to send his top diplomat to Beijing<\/strong>. This will be Kuleba\u2019s first trip there since 2022, which followed the first such trip to Kiev by the Vatican\u2019s top diplomat during this same period, thus advancing the scenario of China and the EU (via the Vatican) jointly hosting peace talks.<\/p>\n

This is precisely what Orban proposed in his\u00a0peace mission report<\/a>\u00a0for the EU, but since he\u2019s considered by the Eurocrats to be too toxic to associate with, they\u2019d prefer relying on the Vatican as their backchannel for exploring Kiev\u2019s interest in this possibility instead. <\/strong>Zelensky knows that China doesn\u2019t support his maximalist objectives in this conflict, but it\u2019s also not in favor of Russia\u2019s either, so his decision to dispatch Kuleba to Beijing hints at an emerging interest to have it broker a compromise.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, this could take the form of freezing the conflict along the Line of Contact (LOC), but without rescinding Kiev\u2019s claims to Russian-controlled territory within Ukraine\u2019s pre-2014 borders. He couldn\u2019t realistically agree to this though without a referendum after the enormous costs that his country already paid. <\/strong>Klitschko sensed that something of the sort might soon be afoot even before Kuleba\u2019s trip to Beijing was announced (his interview\u2019s publication narrowly preceded it) and that\u2019s why he shared what he did.<\/p>\n

Nobody should have any false expectations about this happening anytime soon, let alone assuming that Russia would agree to it after President Putin\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0last month that no cessation of hostilities is possible without Ukraine first withdrawing from all the territory that Moscow now claims as its own. Even in the event that Kiev voluntarily complied, which is unlikely, then the Kremlin would likely also want other aspects of its national security interests to be ensured as well such as demilitarization and the like.<\/p>\n

In any case, it could form a starting point for resuming dialogue with Russia, even if it\u2019s only initially conducted via mediators like China and\/or the EU (albeit via the Vatican instead of Orban). Zelensky knows that he won\u2019t reconquer his country\u2019s lost territory no matter what he says for the purpose of keeping morale high, hence the need to informally explore a compromise for ending the conflict in the most politically \u201cface-saving\u201d way possible, thus explaining Klitschko\u2019s referendum speculation.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 07\/25\/2024 – 03:30<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/kiev-mayor-klitschko-speculated-zelensky-might-agree-territorial-compromises-russia<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kiev Mayor Klitschko Speculated That Zelensky Might Agree To Territorial Compromises With Russia Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack, Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko, who\u2019s emerged…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1479341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1479340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1479340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1479341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1479340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1479340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1479340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}