Ukrainians will be the ones to “choose the moment and the terms” of peace in the war with Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday.
He said this summer that the West should avoid humiliating Russia, which sparked intense backlash from Ukraine, whose foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba,As early as this spring, other prominent voices had urged concessions to Russia in Ukraine. Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger
that Kyiv should cede territory to help end the war and warned that an embarrassing loss for Russia could destabilize Europe.Kissinger said pursuing anything past the “status quo ante” — with Russia controlling Crimea, which it annexed illegally in 2014, and maintaining informal influence in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk — would “not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.
Ukraine has been clear that it will not accept any peace deals that include surrendering territory to Russia, and after Moscow illegallyfour Ukrainian regions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky formally ruled out peace talks. The conditions established by the West — sanctions and other means to weaken Russia without direct involvement — have set the stage for Ukraine to “choose … peace,” Macron said at the conference, pausing mid-sentence.Advertisement
Calls for a peace deal may grow more urgent in Europe, however, as concerns rise over inflation, which the war has exacerbated. A survey released in June found that more than a third of Europeans