“No one is humiliating Ukraine,” Volodymyr Zelensky told the Financial Times in an interview this morning. “They are killing us.” Ukraine’s president rejected any idea of a “stalemate” along the lines of the status quo ante of February 2022. Zelensky absolutely rejected French president Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that Ukraine will have to cede territory to prevent any humiliation of Vladimir Putin:

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said a stalemate in the war with Russia was “not an option for us” as he once more appealed for western military support to restore his country’s territorial integrity.

“We are inferior in terms of equipment and therefore we are not capable of advancing,” he said. “We are going to suffer more losses and people are my priority.” …

Zelensky hit out at what he saw as attempts by some western allies to explore the terms of a ceasefire without involving Kyiv.

“We need abiding interest from the west, western support for Ukraine’s sovereignty. There cannot be talks behind Ukraine’s back anytime.

“How can we achieve a ceasefire on the territory of Ukraine without listening to the position of this country? This is very surprising.”

Zelensky heaped scorn on Macron specifically, suggesting that Macron is only a poseur as a leader for his impulse to appease Putin:

“Some people want to be leaders. In order to be a leader, you do not need to consider yourself one, but to be behave as a leader,” Zelensky said. “How can we achieve a ceasefire in the territory of Ukraine without listening to the position of country, and without listening to position of the leader of this country? This is very, very surprising.”

In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 28, the leaders of France and Germany “renewed their demand for a ceasefire” and called on Putin to have a direct exchange with Zelensky.

In an interview published Saturday, the French President said, “We must not humiliate Russia so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means. I am convinced that it is France’s role to be a mediating power.”

“We are not going to humiliate anyone,” Zelensky said. “We are going to respond in kind.”

The time for trading land for peace is both long past and not yet arrived. It’s long past in that Zelensky may have negotiated on that basis before Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia’s military had a fearsome reputation at that point and Ukraine’s destruction seemed all but guaranteed. Now that Ukrainians know they can fight at least at the same level as the Russians, and now that Russians are in the middle of a genocide, Ukrainians would rather fight to eject Russians altogether and settle this issue once and for all.

Of course, it may well be that neither country has the capability to achieve total victory in this fight. Russians may be making some incremental gains in Donbas, but Ukraine seems to be competitive there, and are currently trying to turn the Russian flank in the northeast. A stalemate may well be the long-term outcome, at which point both sides might be more amenable to a settlement. That time has not arrived yet, clearly, and likely won’t come for months until both countries exhaust their resources.

Zelensky has another consideration to make, too. He could very well fall into a trap in peace negotiations that will turn Ukraine into the 21st century equivalent of 1938 Czechoslovakia, trading land for peace only to set themselves up for being overrun months later. Even if Zelensky traded land for peace in a sustainable agreement, though, he’d face the Michael Collins conundrum of being instantly transformed from a war hero to a traitor among hardliners. Right now, Zelensky’s own popularity might shield him from such an outcome from a negotiated settlement, but popularity is a temporary quality for wartime leaders. Let’s not forget that Winston Churchill lost the elections of June 1945 and had to resign as Prime Minister after his total victory over the Nazis a month earlier, and before the end of the war against Japan.

It’s far too early to put Zelensky in this position. It’s also ridiculous to fret over Putin’s humiliation when humiliation is precisely what is required to discourage any more military invasions of Russia’s neighbors. Appeasing him in 2008 and 2014 clearly didn’t get the message across, and this time the West needs the lesson to be a lot more painful and expensive. Even if Putin refuses to learn that lesson, the oligarchs will grasp it — and might eventually look for their own options.

Here’s the whole interview, which is well worth watching.