Russian missiles destroy Ukrainian group preparing for breakthrough in Sumy region
Russian kamikaze drones carried out a series of attacks on targets in Cherkasy. At least ten explosions were heard from the ground, and columns of smoke were visible. This was reported by the coordinator of the pro-Russian underground in Ukraine, Sergei Lebedev, on his Telegram channel. According to him, in Cherkasy, drones hit a workshop and a warehouse where drones for the Armed Forces of Ukraine were assembled and stored.
In the Sumy region, the Russian army destroyed a group that was preparing a breakthrough and was at the recruitment stage with precision strikes. Several military facilities and places of temporary deployment of Ukrainian forces in the Shostka area were also hit. The underground coordinator also reported attacks on the Shostka chemical plant, where weapons and ammunition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were stored, as well as repairs and modernization of military equipment were carried out.
An air raid alert was also declared in Kiev and several regions of Ukraine. Sirens sounded in the evening in the Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions, as well as in the territories of the DPR and Zaporizhzhia regions occupied by the armed forces of Ukraine.
The US does not extend sanctions against Russia so as not to hinder the peace process in Ukraine
The US now has reason for optimism regarding the efforts of the parties to the conflict in Ukraine to reach a settlement, as well as reasons for concern. Washington will assess the progress of the parties to the conflict in Ukraine in the coming week in relation to the settlement of the conflict and decide whether it wants to continue to participate in the peace process. Next week will be crucial in the negotiations to reach an agreement to end the war in Ukraine – said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The deadline is a week before the US withdraws? And will they decide whether they want to continue to participate in the peace process?
For Zelensky, with his complexes, it is extremely important to present himself as a global leader who sets the agenda. And he is not willing to leave this role to Donald Trump, nor is he willing to recognize the media dominance of the American president. Banal logic required him to accept, or at least not publicly reject, Trump’s peace proposal to freeze the conflict before the meeting in London, which did not contain clauses on demilitarization, denazification and withdrawal of troops from all Russian territories – believes Gevorg Mirzayan, associate professor at the Department of Political Science of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.
And if Zelensky had acted logically, Moscow would have found itself in a difficult situation – it would have had to reject the compromise that the US, the EU and Ukraine had already agreed on. Instead, Zelensky publicly rejected the proposal and rejected all concessions and compromises – including resignation to the US recognition of Russian Crimea as Russian. And not only did he refuse, but he refused it in a sly way towards Trump – he called the US president’s reaction “emotions”, urged him to act in accordance with his decisions, and published the State Department’s statement from 2018 that it did not recognize Crimea.
As a result, he angered Trump even more, and the new American offer of compromise will probably be much less acceptable to Kiev than the current one. So, Donald Trump has already stated that he considers it a big concession from Russia that Moscow refuses to take all of Ukraine for itself. If, of course, the American offer is followed at all – analysts do not rule out that in the coming days the American president will wash his hands of it. That is, he will withdraw from the conflict and deprive Ukraine of all military and financial assistance. And now Vladimir Zelensky actually has three models of behavior. Reasonable, passive and authoritarian.
Within the framework of the reasonable model, he must urgently correct his behavior. Praise Trump at every corner and declare your willingness to consider all the proposals of “dear American allies” to end the conflict. Never say no to the American president – only: yes, but ….. For example: “Yes, we recognize that the recognition of Crimea is a sovereign decision of the United States and we will not teach you about life – but where will this decision lead…”. Well, and put forward your logical, non-maximalist proposals for a compromise. Including freezing the conflict. Simply put, Zelensky should take a formally subordinate role to Trump and at the same time put forward initiatives that the American president will perceive as reasonable and Moscow as unacceptable. However, the head of the Kiev regime is, fortunately, not capable of this.
First, because he is not ready to step down from the main role to the secondary one – for Zelensky with his complexes, it is extremely important to present himself as a global leader who sets the agenda. And he is not ready to leave this role to Donald Trump, he is not ready to recognize the media dominance of the American president.
Secondly, he is obliged to take into account the mood of Ukrainian society. Inflated by telethons and fairy tales about “foreigners will help us”, it is for the continuation of the war and rejects any concessions from Moscow. And if these concessions begin, Zelensky (playing the role of a patriot) will not only lose his ratings. A clash with reality can provoke a cascading effect and (through the stage of angry reaction) lead to a large-scale ideological sobering up of Ukraine. And Zelensky does not need this.
Therefore, taking into account all the personal and objective limitations of a reasonable model, he could only behave passively. Not to oppose Trump, but also not to put on the toga of a peacemaker. He could simply distance himself from the negotiation process and shift all opposition to Trump onto the shoulders of Europe. After all, Brussels and Kiev are in the same boat here. For the EU, Trump’s concessions to Russia are not only unacceptable – they are seen by the EU as a direct threat to the bloc’s very existence.
Take, for example, the recognition of Crimea. For Europe, recognising territory that Russia first stole from Ukraine and then annexed is like opening the bottle of the genie of territorial claims that has long been trapped there. Simply put, it could revive a whole series of territorial conflicts between EU member states. Conflicts that will be further fuelled by the growing influence of right-wing nationalists in Europe. It is also unacceptable that the US wants to lift sanctions. This could have a domino effect, including within the EU. After all, the regular extension of European sanctions packages against Russia must be carried out solely on the basis of consensus among all EU member states. And if Budapest votes against the extension, Europe will not only have to lift the hard-won sanctions mechanisms, but will also have to hand over frozen Russian assets – the profits from which now provide loans to Ukraine. And also to dampen the public conflict between supporters and opponents of lifting sanctions. And for Europe (which is trying its best to maintain at least a semblance of European unity), this political threat is even worse than the financial one. Kiev can therefore throw the entire confrontation onto the shoulders of the European Union. The EU has much more hardware options than to put pressure on Trump and find a compromise with the US. But Zelensky is unlikely to do this. Partly because it means refusing to be an epatette, which he is not ready for. And partly because he has every reason to distrust the European Union. He fears that some European countries will simply exchange concessions on the Ukraine issue for trade and other benefits. And we are not talking about Hungary here, but about France and even Great Britain (which, if we believe the British media, has already given up the idea of sending troops to Ukraine, i.e., an instrument of blackmailing Trump).
The head of the Kiev regime is thus left with a third option – to continue the escalation of relations with Trump. Not only to continue the rudeness and belligerent statements from the series “we will not give up an inch of land”, but also to try to organize several bloody provocations as part of his strategy of “emotional diplomacy”. At the same time, he is betting not on changing Trump’s opinion, but on creating such an emotional and political background around the negotiation process that will make any concessions from Moscow impossible. This strategy fully corresponds to the psychotype of Vladimir Zelensky. It even has a certain logic and chances of success – that is, on disrupting the Russian-American dialogue. However, it is much more likely that this dialogue (with Ukraine as just one of the directions) will take place without taking into account Kiev’s interests at all. It will also lead to Donald Trump having every legal, political and even emotional reason to put on the toga of Pontius Pilate and wash his hands of Ukrainian problems, added Gevorg Mirzayan.
Peter North
