Ukrainian mood hardens as MPs insist country should not be forced to surrender; The Guardian, August 17, 2025

Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv and Artem Mazhulin , The Guardian; Ukrainian mood hardens as MPs insist country should not be forced to surrender

[Kip Currier: For anyone who thinks Ukraine should just capitulate to Putin and Trump's pressure to give up its sovereign territory and its peoples, realize what that means: 

all. Ukrainians. in. those. territories. will. now. be. living. under. Russian. totalitarian. rule. 

Period. Full stop.

Ask yourself, too, if you're an American, if you'd be willing to just acquiesce to pressure and surrender a half dozen U.S. states to an authoritarian invader.

Moreover, giving up those states to Russia is no guarantee that Russia won't later use those newly acquired regions as footholds to again attack Ukraine and try to take over the entire country. As an 8/17/25 BBC article reports:

Zelensky has consistently said Ukraine would not hand over the Donbas in exchange for peace. And confidence in Russia to abide by any such arrangement – rather than simply use the annexed land for future attacks – is low.  

For that and other reasons, about 75% of Ukrainians object to any formal cessation of land to Russia, according to polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgv1pdkll8o

 

That's what a despotic abductor of Ukrainian children, a bomber of hospitals, and indicted war criminal like Putin is likely to do.

And for anyone who is a marginalized person in those territories, such as LGBTQ+ persons, your very life may be at risk if Russia takes control of those lands. (See here and here and here.]

[Excerpt]

"A string of Ukrainian politicians and public figures condemned the idea of handing over unoccupied land to Russia for peace on Sunday, arguing that their country had not been defeated and should not be forced into a surrender.

The hardening of the mood came at the end of a weekend where there was first ridicule and disgust in Ukraine at the red-carpet treatment of Vladimir Putin by Donald Trump at their summit in Alaska, followed by frustration as it appeared that Trump was siding with the Russian leader.

Trump reportedly told European leaders that he believed a peace deal could be negotiated if Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to give up the areas of the Donbas region that the Russian invaders have not been able to seize in more than three years of fighting.

Halyna Yanchenko, an independent member of Ukraine’s parliament, said the suggestion that Ukraine should “simply surrender new territories without a fight – just because Putin wants it – is absurd from the very start”.

The MP, an anti-corruption activist previously part of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, said hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians would be affected by Putin’s proposal, initially favoured by Trump after Friday’s Alaska summit.

Official estimates are that 255,000 people still live in the 3,500 square miles (9,000 sq km) of Donetsk province that Russia has been unable to seize in its three-and-a-half-year invasion, which includes the industrial cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The Donbas also comprises Luhansk province, which is almost totally occupied by Russia.

Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion the population of Donetsk was 1.9 million, so the number of people with property and other connections to the area wanted by Russia is higher. “So when someone brings up the idea of ‘trading territory’, we must understand that in practice it is trading people,” Yanchenko said...

Cartoons and memes circulated widely online over the weekend with a particular focus on the sight of US soldiers kneeling to straighten out the red carpet in Alaska for the Russian president.

“Dishonored,” wrote Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian drone fundraiser, on X, comparing the image to soldiers raising the US flag at Iwo Jima towards the end of the second world war.

Maksym Palenko, a cartoonist, drew a picture of a glum-looking Trump with his trademark red tie spooling out beneath him and turning into a carpet on which a laughing Putin was standing. It reflected shots of Putin smiling as he was sitting in Trump’s limousine while it was setting off.

“We do not deserve to surrender and we are not in a position to surrender,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, an MP with the opposition European Solidarity party. “This part of Donetsk is a fortress and Putin has tried and failed to take it for 11 years. Now he wants to take it through diplomatic tricks and manoeuvres.”"