Negotiate, or push on in a losing war? From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:
A year and a half into the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may be finding himself back in the same dilemma he was confronted with at the beginning of his presidency, only magnified by the disaster of war.
In April 2019, Zelensky won a surprising landslide victory, taking 73% of the run-off vote. He won, in large part due to a platform that featured making peace with Russia and signing the Minsk Agreement and due to massive support from the eastern ethnic Russian regions of Ukraine.
But despite the massive public support – at the time, over 70% of Ukrainians supported a negotiated settlement of the Donbas crisis the Minsk Agreements were meant to resolve – a small group of ultranationalists with disproportionately large power overwhelmed that support. Though, upon being elected, Zelensky told reporters that he would “reboot” peace talks with separatists in Donbas and that “we will continue in the direction of the Minsk [peace] talks and head towards concluding a ceasefire,” he “faced an immediate backlash at home.”
Ultranationalist leaders defied Zelensky and warned that a ceasefire and the direction he was taking in fulfillment of his campaign promises would lead to protests and riots. More seriously, they threatened his life. Dmytro Yarosh, the founder of the far right nationalist Right Sector paramilitary organization, threatened that, if Zelensky fulfilled his campaign promise, “he’ll lose his life. He’ll hang from some tree. . . . It is important that he understand this.” During a presentation announcing Zelensky’s creation of a National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity on March 12, 2020, Zelensky advisor Sergei Sivokho was thrown to the ground by a large gang from the Azov battalion.
