‘Russia to fight until last Ukrainian dies’: Putin threatens annihilation if Zelenskyy wouldn’t surrender

Sticking to his maximalist demands irrespective of US President Donald Trump’s peace process, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has threatened Ukraine with annihilation if President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would not surrender territories he wants.

Since Russian launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin has demanded Zelenskyy to give up the claim on Crimea, the peninsula that Russia invaded and occupied in 2014, and surrender the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

If Ukraine would not do that, Putin said Russia would continue the war until the death of the last Ukrainian.

Under his ‘28-point’ plan, Trump has pressed Ukraine to do exactly the same. But the clause received pushback from Ukraine and its European partners because it involved surrendering fortified areas that were not yet in Russian control.

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Moreover, Donbas region’s Donetsk province has long been the mining and industrial heartland of Ukraine. Giving that up without a fight would cripple the Ukrainian economy and amount to a political suicide. Experts have said that it could also tear apart civilian-military relationship in the country.

Putin rejects efforts to reach middle ground

Sticking to his maximalist demands, Putin said that he will have Ukraine’s land that he wants either through a surrender or force.

Claiming his army is “practically impossible to hold back”, Putin said during his visit to Kyrgyzstan that “some people demand to keep on fighting until the last Ukrainian dies and Russia is ready for that”.

Putin further said, “If Ukrainian forces leave the territories they hold, then we will stop combat operations. If they don’t, then we will achieve it by military means.”

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'Not an inch': Ukraine shuts down Russia's push to surrender territory

As for Trump’s proposal, which already included most of his maximalist demands, Putin rejected it and said it could form “the basis for future agreements”. But he dismissed Ukraine’s leadership as illegitimate and said it was “senseless” to sign anything with Zelenskyy.

For a long time, Putin has rejected Ukraine’s nationhood and dubbed Zelenskyy as an illegitimate leader of an illegitimate country.

On the other hand, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has said that no sane person will cede territory as per Putin’s desires.

“Not a single sane person today would sign a document to give up territory. As long as Zelenskyy is president, no one should count on us giving up territory. He will not sign away territory The constitution prohibits this. Nobody can do that unless they want to go against the Ukrainian constitution and the Ukrainian people,” Yarmak told The Atlantic.