“Ukraine is trying to turn the chessboard over and start playing cards”: military expert on potential peace talks with russia
16 August 2024 16:34
EXCLUSIVE
Advisor to the Head of the Presidential Office Mykhailo Podoliak saidthat Ukraine is not interested in occupying Russian territories, but will conduct potential negotiations with Moscow on its own terms, as “there are proven, effective means of coercion”.
According to military expert Ivan Stupak, such a statement by the adviser to the head of the Presidential Administration indicates that Ukraine, by attacking Kursk, is trying to change the “rules of the game” that Russia wanted to introduce, dictating its terms for possible future negotiations.
“In the past, whenever Russia started talking about peace talks, it always set an unrealistic bar with unacceptable demands that could not even be called basic.
The highest bar they set was to take into account the current realities on the ground. That is, everything that each side has is put at the beginning of peace talks. And Ukraine is now trying to turn this chessboard over, knock down all the pieces and start playing cards,” the expert believes.
According to Ivan Stupak, with the offensive in Kursk and possible future military operations, Ukraine will try to lower the bar for negotiations with Russia.
“That is, there is an attempt on the part of Ukraine to knock the foundation, the dogma of the current realities on the ground from under the feet of the Russian Federation and try to lower the initial demands of the Russians to more acceptable ones for us,” the military expert said.
Earlier, in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow could cease fire and negotiate only when Ukraine completely withdraws its troops from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
However, after the border breakthrough in the Kursk region, Putin said that the topic of negotiations with Ukraine was now completely closed.
At the same time, Russian publicist and US opposition politician Andrei Piontkovsky believesthat the war in Ukraine could end in a few months.
The reason is that a serious conflict is brewing inside Russia between generals, the so-called zet-patriots, and the Kremlin dictator Putin over Ukraine’s breakthrough in the Kursk region.
According to Piontkovsky, the destruction of the Crimean bridge could be the trigger for the end of the war in Ukraine.
Author – Alyona Kaplina
