“why can’t ukraine just give some land to russia?” 20 days in mariupol is on youtube! hope this helps. 😊
I see people asking this question seriously and I want to address it.
Why won't Ukraine just give russia some land?
Well, when you hear "land" what are you picturing? Acres of untamed wilderness? Fields of wildflowers stretching into the horizon? Picturesque unsettled mountain cliffs? Miles of empty desert along a highway? Please. If Ukraine had those laid out neatly on the border and russia wanted them, our government would have long sold them for discounts on natural gas. We've had pro-russian governments before. We've had stupid fail governments before. We've had the "sure you can park your military fleet in our port city in exchange for a discount on natural gas' government before.
The Ukrainian flag is a stripe of blue above a stripe of yellow. This symbolizes (low-res depicts, really) sky above a field of wheat. Because that's what most of the territory of Ukraine is. Cultivated land. Developed land. Settled land. Land where people live.
The russian advance is measured in villages, towns, and in individual fields, hills, and field-sized forest patches between them. Because that's what's there. Settlements. People's houses and sources of food.
Three things happen to people whose houses those are:
- They die. Their houses, roads, fields, schools, shops, workplaces get bombed while they're there and they don't make it to the ambulance (or, no ambulance comes because no ambulance can come because Russian fire does not respect green corridors, first responders or whatever else). You'd think that ends the story, but those people tend to have neighbours, children, spouses, parents, friends, siblings, coworkers, casual facebook acquaintances. The story very much does not end here.
- They evacuate. They abandon their homes, their gardens, their fields, their machinery, their livestock, depending on available transportation often their pets, depending on people's individual stubbornness often their elderly relatives who refuse to go anywhere (and their young children win in the horrifying calculus of who to prioritize). Some of them join the army to go and try to get their homes and their neighbours' homes and their families' homes and their casual acquaintances' homes back. Some of them try to settle into new lives on new land, starting from zero plus their new neighbours' generosity (modified by how much their new neighbours actually have to spare). Some of them flee abroad, where they don't know the language and don't know how to use the kitchen appliances. Some of them have cushy savings and distant relatives happy to welcome them. A vanishing percent of them doesn't want to go back and isn't angry they had to leave. The rest want their homes back, if only so they can sell them to buy a washing machine that actually works for their new ones. All of them look back and hope everyone they knew survives. (This won't happen, just due to the law of large numbers. Too many will die and have died). These stories aren't over either
- They stay. The tanks roll through their roads without stopping, and when they go to the local military point to sign up with the Ukrainian army they get a grimace and an awkward explanation that they can't do this from here anymore, and also don't talk so loud because the two eighteen year olds in russian fatigues with scared eyes over there on the corner have assault rifles and were told we're all fascists here. I won't detail what happens to them; the world knows.
These people are what's behind the vague word "land". They constitute the territory of Ukraine. The trampled and blown up and mined fields of wheat do not belong to the people in Kyiv sitting in pretty buildings and having skype calls with world leaders. Those hectares and square meters and miraculously still standing houses belong to them.
This is why "Ukraine" (read: Zelensky and his slo-mo trainwreck of a government) can't just "give" (read: reward the invasion, incentivizing repeats in the future) russia some "land" (read: settlements full of people that the current russian government wants to ethnically cleanse).
And why any given individual Ukrainian you meet might just get incoherent with rage at the suggestion.
We elected those people so they'd protect us, not sell us.