In an interview conducted by the Venezuelan journalist based in Spain, David Placer, to the head of the international section of El Confidencial, Diario Digital de España, Alicia Alamillos, who is currently acting as war correspondent in Ukraine, a conversation held with Ukrainian soldiers practically locked up for more than a year in a trench in Bajmut, eastern Ukraine, is recounted. When asked what he has discovered so far, the answer is brutal:
“I have discovered that they are obviously tired, they are some soldiers that many were volunteers since 2022, they have been there for 3 years without renewal in the east, near Bajmut which was conquered by the Russians, they are there in an artillery unit. They live in a kind of burrow, a trench that they build underground to be also a little bit sheltered and not frozen with cold, and they have been there for maybe a year without going out, because it is very close to the front and because there are problems of rotation. So they are soldiers, it does not happen with everyone, there are many who can spend the weekend with their families or whatever, but the soldiers are tired. Of course they are tired, it is a very long war, both because they thought that maybe Putin was going to get to Kiev much faster or because they thought that it was going to end sooner, that the Ukrainians were going to win. So, despite, on the other hand, being so tired of saying, “Look it better be over now and people stop dying,” when you asked him, well, so you want Putin's peace, what do you want, I mean, what does victory mean to you in Ukraine? Because right now the only thing on the table, according to what we see Trump and what we see with Putin, is that Ukraine gives up, gives up territories, but most of all gives up sovereignty. I mean, we're not even talking about Crimea giving up, which could hypothetically be one thing, well, it's not a big deal, so to speak, but Putin having the right to elect the president of Ukraine or having the right to decide whether Europe is going to provide security safeguards or not. So that's losing sovereignty, that's not really being a country anymore”.
“And then, when you ask them that, they say: no, there is no other way. I mean, no, I have to keep fighting. Because no, no, what am I going to do? I mean, go back home so that in a few years Russia will invade us again, or in a few years Ukrainian will be forbidden; in a few years all our politics will depend on Vladimir Putin and he won't let us be an independent country. That they are tired, but they don't have an alternative. I mean, it's not like, for example, other wars that you say: well, here it's over and that's it, and everyone wins their own things. No, no. Ukraine is an existential question. I mean, if they lose, they have lost as a state...”
(see in Spanish David Placer's interview with Alicia Alamillos, head of the international section of El Confidencial Diario Digital de España, in https://youtu.be/q29VGYm1-mU?t=922) (highlighted our).
My apologies in advance for the long excerpt of that interview, but it is very important for what follows. We Venezuelans should see ourselves portrayed in what is happening in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin's Russia entered Ukraine to take it as part of its imperial dream, after it had conquered its independence. They did it by force, by force of arms. But a people with the well-placed and willing leadership of their President, Volodymir Zelensky, have given them a fight of resistance beyond what they expected, at a cost impossible to determine. The Russians mistakenly believed that they would end their invasion in hours and it has been over 3 years now.
The Ukrainian soldiers, even being at a very high level of exhaustion derived from a long war, and stuck in a hole for more than a year, in an area of their territory that Russia has managed to conquer, are not willing to give in or give up, not even for a possibility peace that Trump promises, because for them it is AN EXISTENTIAL ISSUE. They cannot simply return home, because there would be no guarantee that disaster would not happen again, lose even their own language, because they know for a fact that Putin will not allow them to be an independent country, and because if they lose, they lose their country. Sound familiar?
We Venezuelans have not reached -yet- the point of killing ourselves in a war, but in Ukraine, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are taking it upon themselves to go over that courageous decision of the Ukrainian people in the trenches, to fight to the death to achieve freedom, because they are not willing to give in. Very soon we will know what will end up prevailing, but any negotiation that goes against that deep feeling transmitted to the world by the Spanish war correspondent, will not be able to last as a fundamental principle, even if that negotiation carries the obligatory consent of Volodymir Zelenski, which would make that peace very unstable. For the time being, President Zelenski has already stated that Ukraine will not accept any peace agreement reached without the participation of Kiev (see The Epoch Times, in https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/zelenskyy-says-ukraine-will-not-accept-any-peace-deal-made-without-kyivs-involvement-5811579).
In Venezuela, the invaders did not need to enter by force. Hugo Chávez Frías and his successors opened the doors of the country wide open to them, and here we are, after 25 years, besieged by Cubans, Russians, Chinese and Iranians, taking possession of the country with the full authorization of those who call themselves legitimate rulers.
My concern in relation to that is that wars do not necessarily start as in Ukraine. It is enough that there are no exits to the curtailment of freedom, because all the characteristics mentioned by the Ukrainian soldiers stuck in a trench underground are fulfilled in Venezuela. In fact, the Venezuelan war of independence did not start with Spain “invading” the Captaincy General of Venezuela, the Spaniards were already here!
In other words, how long will it be possible to peacefully tolerate that all the politics of the country depend on the invader, who will never let us be independent as a Nation? The tyranny has publicly declared a thousand times that they will not give up power, neither by hook or by crook, with the same persistence that Putin shows to take over Ukraine, and that has originated this violent resistance that only ends when one annihilates the other.
Venezuelans, wanting to insist on peace, went to an election without conditions, even knowing the regime's intention to stay by force. The world observed that they lost the elections and decided to shamelessly mock the will of the people. What will it take then for this situation to explode into pure, hard and open violence and we start killing each other? Because, as much as they believe that they have already solved the resistance by persecuting, torturing and annihilating the opposition, it would be very stupid not to think that at some point the blows will come back. The unprecedented cruelty demonstrated, in front of the whole world, towards those who oppose him, as in the case of the Argentinean embassy refugees, could be a trigger for that violence.
And every step forward taken by Maduro to continue subjugating a people who only want to live in peace and democratic freedom, because that has been their republican tradition, is an additional step that leads us to the ravine of political violence initiated by the side of those who decide at some point not to continue with the rules of peace, against those who make war on us. That is the natural response of self-defense. It is as if I were listening to Bolivar's historical cry: “300 years are not enough?
And I am not pretending here to suggest that route, but it would be irresponsible not to warn against it. Because if those to whom the Venezuelan people gave a manifest and majority mandate to exercise legitimate power, and to take the reins until the end of a process of liberation of the peaceful country as far as possible, do not officially assume it, to make the decisions about what to do effectively to prevent this situation, the current -whatever it may be- will follow a course without any control, but with greater force, increasing the probability of becoming the main focus of violent instability in the continent. Then, the US will not have to travel as a priority to a place as far away as Ukraine or Saudi Arabia to seek peace, but will have to deal with the fire that will exist in its own backyard, because for us Venezuela is also an existential issue...
Caracas, February 19, 2025
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