C&P of a Tweet (?X) by journalist Illia Ponomarenko ..apologies if the link has already been provided upthread, I may have missed it:
Illia Ponomarenko
"Can you give up any part of Ukraine for peace?"
Very seriously one of the silliest and the most childish questions one can ask nowadays.
And not just because it simply puts us in a world where a sovereign nation, a target of large-scale military aggression and the biggest war of conquest since WWII, is being pressured into the betrayal of a huge part of its own territory and people "for the sake of peace", and that is being done as some perverted form of high moral ground.
And not just because it puts us in a world where any warmongering regime, especially those having the bomb or moving towards having one, is officially encouraged and welcome to extort everything and anything they want, "or else!"
It's a world in which high-minded pseudo-intellectuals think the freedom and independence of a 40-million nation are somewhat of lesser value than their beloved fear of "nuclear escalation" they have licked all over for years.
It's silly because such a naive approach just doesn't work.
No, you won't "give peace a chance" by just forcing Ukraine into giving up of 20% of its territory (or 10%, or 50%, or 80%, whatever).
Maybe we should give up Florida to Vladimir V. Putin of Russia "for the sake of peace?" Or maybe the Lake Como area?
No? Why not?
In the lore of today's Kremlin propaganda, the current war in Ukraine is not about just Ukraine but the entire West, America & NATO (oh yeah, they're too chauvinistic to be losing the war to those dirty khokhols alone).
Of course, it's extremely naive to think that giving Putin Zaporizhia or Dnipro for now would somehow make him stop. (I think once upon a time there was a guy with whom a similar thing didn't work out).
Because it's not a lawsuit in which a rancho owner next door disputes your legal ownership over a patch of land between your households.
Putin & his cronies don't give a shit about Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Kyiv, Bakmut/Mariupol you name it. Territorial grabs are nothing but just an instrument.
HE NEEDS WAR AS SUCH.
He needs never-ending confrontation, international isolation, the besieged fortress of mother Russia, hatred, division, Cold War 2.0, and the state of 10 seconds to midnight forevermore.
If things had been as planned on February 24, with Ukraine crushed and Kyiv taken within 3 days, it would have been a brilliant triumph.
The vast majority of the Russian population would have been ecstatic about the new conquest. But similarly to the Crimea effect of 2014, the euphoria would evaporate before too long.
The Crimean appeasement morphed into a bloodletting war of Donbas. The West's desire to put its head in the sand via the Minsk Accords ended up being February 24, 2022.
Who would have been next soon if things went as planned those days?
THE KREMLIN CAN'T CARRY ON WITHOUT IGNITING NEW WARS AGAIN AND AGAIN.
Yet another attempt to twist Ukraine's hands into a "concession for the sake of peace" will again result in nothing but a short respite -- and then an even more catastrophic war.
If you seriously think this war can be ended by just giving Putin what he wants AGAIN, I can only suggest that you try to grow up and see some real life.
KREMLIN WARS WILL NOT STOP UNTIL WE STOP THE KREMLIN.
But if you seriously ask things like "Can you give up any part of Ukraine for peace?" knowing what really stands behind that -- you could just have some guts to admit that you don't care about "peace" and you just need to get rid of this annoying problem for now and keep comfortably feeding the crocodile hoping that it will eat you last.