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According to US President Donald Trump, a possible agreement on the termination of Russia’s war against Ukraine will include “exchange of territories” on both sides, which in practice means territorial concessions in Kyiv.
Nevertheless, Ukrainian troops do not own Russian territory, which excludes some kind of “return” of the land to Moscow. All upcoming debates relate to Ukrainian territories that Russia holds since the first invasion of 2014 and a major attack of 2022.
If Trump exerts pressure on the territory, he will have to not only convince Volodimir Zelensky, but primarily the Ukrainian people themselves. And the Ukrainian president realizes well that even he himself cannot convince citizens that they reject.
Anton Liagoz, the dean of the School of Social Sciences and the Humanities at Kiev University of Economics, told Euronews that if the Ukrainian authorities are pressure on territorial concessions, “the people will go to the streets.”
“This will be not so much a protest against the authorities as a scream to the whole world: in order to consider it as a large state in the center of Europe, and not as a plot of land that the United States sees,” he added. “Ukrainians are a complete nation, and Ukraine is a large state with its legislation.”
Social resistance
Liaguza recalled that since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has formed a society that does not tolerate authoritarianism, as it turned out in the “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014, the “Orange Revolution” in 2004 and the “Revolution in granite” in 1991.
“The president of the Ukrainian society is not a king. His will does not determine the will of the whole people, ”he said. From the moment the Russian language began, almost every family has been directly or indirectly affected, which further strengthened this balance of forces.
“People are fighting against the attacker, for the democracy and integration of our country into the European Union,” he said.
The voice of the road
In July, thousands of Ukrainians demonstrated a bill, which would eliminate the independence of antidiafrager institutions. Within several days, Zelenski introduced a new bill, which restored their independence, and the government is forced to withdraw the initial plan.
This was another evidence that after the three main revolutions of just more than three decades – one of which overthrew Filorahia Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 – the Ukrainian authorities are still sensitive to the Voice of the Street.
Having signed the new law, Zelensky admitted: “We all hear what society says. We see what awaits state institutions for justice and effectiveness. ”
The misunderstanding of the West
According to Ligaus, the United States and many European countries are difficult to understand this impulse, because they live in conditions of stability and comfort, without recent experience in mass mobilization.
“Western democracies often consider Ukrainian society as a group of volunteers or activists created to solve specific problems. They do not understand that these people are the creators of the new Ukrainian state, ”he concluded.