For weeks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has unsuccessfully tried to engage Vladimir Putin in direct talks. On Tuesday, Zelensky addressed Putin’s troops instead (watch above).

In his daily TV address, Zelensky urged Russian soldiers to lay down their arms, saying “If you surrender to our forces, we will treat you the way people are supposed to be treated. As people, decently — in a way you were not treated in your army. And in a way your army does not treat ours. Choose!”

Zelensky, speaking in Russian, added “I know that you want to survive.”

“You will not take anything from Ukraine. You will take lives,” he said. “But your life will also be taken.”

Since the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reports have emerged that Russian troops are suffering from extremely low morale. Many are poorly paid and poorly trained conscripts, pressed into a war they weren’t expecting. And Ukraine and Russia share many cultural ties, a fact that makes urban warfare particularly disheartening. In an opinion piece for POLITICO, Victoria Smolkin, an associate professor of history at Wesleyan University, writes:

…it is precisely this cultural proximity that seems to be having a powerful effect on Russian military morale. Russian soldiers have been told they are there to liberate Russian-speaking Ukrainians from a genocidal Nazi regime bent on eradicating their language, culture, and identity. Instead, they meet a grandpa who reprimands them for coming to Ukraine and tells them, “I’m also Russian.” When their tank runs out of gas on the road, they meet a Ukrainian driver who asks them if they need a tow back to Russia, and they all share a good laugh. They can speak the same language; they understand the same jokes.

In his remarks on Tuesday, Zelensky praised Russian dissidents, particularly the state TV employee who held up an anti-war sign during a live broadcast on Monday.

“As long as your country has not completely closed itself off from the whole world, turning into a very large North Korea, you must fight,” Zelensky said. “You must not lose your chance.”