US Politics
Ukraine peace deal must put people before land, warns key Zelensky ally
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A key political ally of Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine has called for a peace deal which prioritises people over land ahead of a major conference in the war torn country on Thursday.
Vitaliy Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv Oblast region in Ukraine, is an emerging name in Ukrainian politics and spoke to The Independent as other governors and mayors get together to discuss where the peace line needs to be drawn in the war with Russia.
Mr Kim headed the Mykolaiv branch of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party during the 2019 elections and was appointed by the Ukrainian president to be regional governor in November 2020.
His significant intervention ahead of Frontline Cities and Communities Forum 2026, where governors and mayors will try to agree what they want from a peace settlement, underlines a willingness to move away from border arguments to security guarantees.
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He also issued a warning for allies including the UK preparing to take part in the so-called Coalition of the Willing to guarantee peace to learn the lessons of Neville Chamberlain and appeasement of the 1930s.
Asked about his priorities in the Donald Trump led peace plan, Governor Kim said: “The land is important, but still, people are more important and the situation is that we do not know what will be tomorrow.”
He admitted: “For me personally, victory is our borders from 1991 where people are happy and not killed, but everybody is very tired.
“So for the Ukrainian people, I think the victory is just stopping the war and some guarantees of security for the future, for our children to have the life that we had before the invasion.
“I think for the majority of our people, the victory is to have their life like it was before the invasion. And it is very important for us because a lot of time has passed.”
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On his fear of history repeating itself with Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron’s Coalition of the Willing, he noted: “I remember the history when [Neville] Chamberlain wrote the paper, when other leaders were promising to fight the aggressor, I remember what was happening next.”
He said that they needed to look at the wider implications of the war beyond Ukraine.
“This is not a problem of our own in Ukraine,” he said. “From my point of view it is different wars between autocratic and democratic countries, and the power of rules over the power of force.”
The 44-year-old who hails from the strategic Black Sea port Mykolaiv noted that comparatively the losses in the war started by Vladimir Putin “are already worse the the Second World War.”
His region was on the front line before Ukrainian forces pushed Russian troops back and his since been providing back up to the new front line in Kherson.
While many estimate that the Russian economy has two more years before it collapses from the sanctions imposed because of the war, Mr Kim questions if Ukraine can survive that long.
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He said: “The Russian economy is suffering also, and in my opinion, they have a couple of years to start decreasing publicly. I think that Russia knows it, but still, they have time, and Ukraine does not have time.
“We are exhausted and first, it’s not about weapons, it’s not about missiles, it’s about people. We’ve only 40 million people and everybody is exhausted. Our soldiers cannot fight for four to 10 years.”
He said that President Trump had made a breakthrough because “he is not predictable” which had made it more difficult for the Russians.
He said: “If it was a traditional policy, step by step, nothing could be changed with Russia, because they can predict it so the only way to change something is through the unpredictable, international policy, that Donald Trump is doing now.
“I truly believe that only with such things, that with economic force, physical force, and only in such a way can we stop Russia.”
