Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to send out a firm message of defiance.
When we met this weekend in the government headquarters in Kyiv, he said that far from losing, Ukraine would end the war victorious. He was firmly against paying the price for a ceasefire deal demanded by President Vladimir Putin, which is withdrawing from strategic ground that Russia has failed to capture despite sacrificing tens of thousands of soldiers.
Putin, Zelensky told me, has already started World War Three, and the only answer was intense military and economic pressure to force him to step back.
“I believe that Putin has already started it. The question is how much territory he will be able to seize and how to stop him… Russia wants to impose on the world a different way of life and change the lives people have chosen for themselves.”
Putin wants to, but can’t. Ue doesn’t have the economy to sustain a war on that scale. He hopes to destabilise NATO, the EU and the US (and has had quite a bit of success) so he can pick us off one by one.
The way to stop him is to stay united and ensure victory for Ukraine. A victory for Putin would only empower him.