strength, because he must know that in the medium to long—term, his position will not be so good. and this is the assessment from our russia editor, steve rosenberg. president zelensky did say that he'd be willing to discuss ukraine's neutral status — in other words, discuss the possibility of ukraine giving up its aspirations to join nato. you would think that is something that russia would welcome, but, and there are a couple of buts here. first of all, president zelensky insisted there had to be a referendum on this, once russian troops had pulled out of his country. this could take months and it's hard to see the kremlin agreeing to wait. the other thing is, i wonder whether ukrainian neutrality is enough now for vladimir putin because it's widely believed that all along, his objective has been to force ukraine, to force russia“s neighbour, back into russia“s orbit. we should note that ukraine formally abandoned its neutral status