As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received a $3.3 billion loan from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer Saturday, to pursue the war just one day after a heated, public argument with President Trump at the White House. According to Iluiia Mendel, Ukrainians want to end the war.
Earlier at the end of February in an interview with France 24 Iuliia Mendel, who was the spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from 2019 to 2021 explained that Ukrainians want to end their suffering and need a ceasefire. She is the author of The Fight of Our Lives: My Time with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s Battle for Democracy, and What It Means for the World.
We perhaps cannot win this war militarily and we need to think about our people,” Mendel said of Zelensky’s apparent willingness to go to the negotiating table earlier in February. (France 24)
Mendel cautioned that negotiations with Russia would be difficult. Among these difficulties: Russian President in all peace talks includes prohibiting Ukraine from ever joining NATO.
The ‘illusion’ of NATO membership?
According to Menadal Ukraine is ready for peace and to give up NATO membership.
We have been negotiating the invitation to NATO for the last three years,” Mendel noted. However, she admitted that there is opposition from many members of NATO, calling this understandable because NATO is afraid to escalate the war further. I don’t think it’s realistic to exchange so many Ukrainians’ lives and put the Ukrainian nation under the illusion that NATO will invite us at some point. Russia is occupying around 20 percent of Ukraine, but it’s actively shelling around eight or nine regions of Ukraine every day, hugely with artillery, with a drone on civilians, with aerial-guided bombs and missiles, Mendel noted. You cannot imagine what it means to live in those territories. (France 24)
Mendel explained that the Ukrainians who are living under shelling are the most eager for a ceasefire.
I’m talking here to different people, including from those regions that I mentioned that are under shelling. And I hear only one thought there: that people are eager to have a ceasefire. The majority of the people in Ukraine agree on the need for a ceasefire,” she concluded. (France 24)
