Ukraine told critics of the pace of its three-month-old counteroffensive to "shut up" on Thursday, the sharpest signal yet of Kyiv's frustration at leaks from Western officials that say its forces are advancing too slowly.
If your goal is to prevent deaths, surrendering would have been the ideal yeah.
This has literally never been true in any war ever. Foreign occupations rarely tend to be bloodless and I doubt a Russian one would have been an exception. At no point were any of the peace talks about Ukraine's surrender – only renouncing it's NATO ambitions in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian troops, as per:
"In the weeks ahead of Johnson's April 9 visit, high-level diplomatic talks held in Belarus and Turkey had failed to yield a diplomatic breakthrough, though reports in mid-March indicated that Russian and Ukrainian delegations "made significant progress" toward a 15-point peace deal that would involve Ukraine renouncing its NATO ambitions in exchange for the withdrawal of Moscow's troops."
At no point was surrender on the table - that would have likely lead to Zelenksy's detention and execution in the early days of the invasion.
I don't think Zelensky was too keen on capitulating to Vladimir Putin's demands to destroy his country, after sending in GRU hit squads to kill him and his family multiple times at the outset of the war.
This has literally never been true in any war ever. Foreign occupations rarely tend to be bloodless and I doubt a Russian one would have been an exception. At no point were any of the peace talks about Ukraine's surrender – only renouncing it's NATO ambitions in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian troops, as per:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/06/boris-johnson-pressured-zelenskyy-ditch-peace-talks-russia-ukrainian-paper
"In the weeks ahead of Johnson's April 9 visit, high-level diplomatic talks held in Belarus and Turkey had failed to yield a diplomatic breakthrough, though reports in mid-March indicated that Russian and Ukrainian delegations "made significant progress" toward a 15-point peace deal that would involve Ukraine renouncing its NATO ambitions in exchange for the withdrawal of Moscow's troops."
At no point was surrender on the table - that would have likely lead to Zelenksy's detention and execution in the early days of the invasion.
I don't think Zelensky was too keen on capitulating to Vladimir Putin's demands to destroy his country, after sending in GRU hit squads to kill him and his family multiple times at the outset of the war.