Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has reaffimed his firm refusal to cede any territory, resisting U.S. pressure for a painful compromise with Russia as he continued to rally European support for Ukraine.
“Undoubtedly, Russia insists for us to give up territories. We, clearly, don’t want to give up anything. That’s what we are fighting for,” Zelenskyy said in a WhatsApp chat late Monday in which he answered reporters’ questions.
“Do we consider ceding any territories? According to the law we don’t have such right. According to Ukraine’s law, our constitution, international law, and to be frank, we don’t have a moral right either.”
I think it’s a combination of factors.
There’s some amount of propaganda. Governments often try to convince people to confuse fact and fiction.
There’s also an institutional momentum effect. Once you get a group of people together, they tend to recruit more people who think like them, so once an idea gets hold, it’s hard to get rid of.
And there’s the sensationalism effect. There are many possible predictions for the future; the extreme ones are more fun to read.