Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky plans to put all agreements reached with Russia in peace talks to the public in a nationwide referendum, news agency MIA informs.
An eventual compromise with Russia over security guarantees and the occupied areas of Ukraine must be approved in a referendum, he said in a televised address Monday evening. Kyiv and Moscow are in negotiations at the moment but there have been no concrete agreements so far.
“I have said to all the negotiation groups that if you talk about all the changes, even if they’re historic, we will go nowhere. We will go to a referendum,” Zelensky said. He said the people must have their say about “this or that form” of compromise.
Zelensky also issued a general rejection of ultimatums from Russia, after Moscow ordered Ukrainian troops to surrender in the besieged port city of Mariupol on Monday. Ukraine rejected the ultimatum.
The President of Ukraine also called on his country’s people to keep up the fight against Russian troops in the face of increasing violence against civilians. He appealed to Ukrainians to do everything they could to protect the state. He called for the “invaders” to be driven out “so that Ukraine lives and we all live together with her, free and at peace.” He referred to the Russian military as “tourists with tanks” and “slaves to their propaganda, which has changed their consciousness.”
The “slaves” sent by Russia have never seen so many free people in the streets and squares, he said. “They have never seen thousands of people who are not afraid of them,” he said, referring to a rally of civilians in occupied Kherson. Russian troops reportedly broke it up at gunpoint on Monday. Zelensky said sorrow awaits all Russian soldiers who target Ukrainian civilians. Ukraine is not Russia, he said. “Resistance does not need to be organized here – for Ukrainians, resistance is a quality of the soul,” he said.
