Serhii Plokhy
speaker
375 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard Mar 2024
Serhii Plokhy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And we are in a situation where both sides still believe that they can achieve something or improve their position on the battlefield. Certainly, that was the expectations of the Ukrainian side back in the summer and early fall of 2023. And from what I understand now, these are certainly the expectations of the Russian side today.
This is the largest war in Europe since World War II, the largest war in the world since the Korean War. We know that the Korean War ended in this division of Korea, but the negotiations were going on for more than two years. While those negotiations were going on, both sides were trying to improve their position there.
And until there was a political change, death of Stalin, arrival of Eisenhower in the United States, and the realization that the chances of succeeding on the battlefield are huge, the peace talks didn't come. So at this point, all three scenarios are possible. I don't really discount any of them. It's early to say what will happen.
Meaning back to the borders of 2022?
No, it is not just virtual impossibility. It is impossible without political change in Moscow. The reason is that back in the fall of 2022,
Vladimir Putin included five of Ukrainian region's oblasts, even those that he didn't control or didn't control fully, into the Russian constitution, which basically, in simple language, is that the hands are tied up not only for Putin himself, but also for his possible successors. So that means that no return to the borders of 2022 without political change in Moscow are possible.
A few days after that decision in Moscow, Zelensky issued a decree saying that no negotiations with Russia. What that really meant in plain language is that basically we are not prepared to negotiate a stable agreement with five of our obelisks, not just the next, but also included into the Russian Constitution. So that's where we are.
So that scenario is, again, everything is possible, of course, but it's highly, highly unlikely.
Yes, and not only as a negotiation tactic for Putin or whoever would negotiate on the Russian side, but also as a legal issue.
Yes, you really have to change the constitution before the peace agreement takes hold or immediately after that. And with the Minsk agreements, that was one of the things that Russia wanted from Ukraine, change of the constitution. And it turned out to be really impossible. So that's one of the backstories of the Minsk and collapse of the Minsk agreements.
Given how fast those amendments to the Constitution were adopted, that suggests that really executive power in Russia has enormous power over the legislative branch. So it's, again, difficult to imagine, but technically this is possible, again, but possible if there is a political change in Moscow.
There is a possibility of armistice, right? But armistice more along the, like any armistice, along the lines of the current front lines. But withdrawal of the Russian troops to the borders of 2022 at this point, whether it's reasonable or unreasonable, can be achieved only as the result of the defeat of the Russian army, like it happened near Kiev. Is it possible? Possible. Is it possible?
Likely, especially given what is happening with the Western support, military support for Ukraine, probably not.
Certainly not this year. I look at this year as the time when at least one side, Russian side, will try to get as much as it can through military means.
It doesn't mean that every new year somehow is supposed to bring new tactics. The last year was pretty much a lot of fighting, a lot of suffering. Very little movement of the front line. The biggest change of the last year was Ukraine victory on the Black Sea, where they pushed the Russian Navy into the western part of the pond.
and restored the grain corridor and export from Odessa, apparently up to 75% of what it used to be before the war. So that's the only major change. But again, the price is enormous in terms of wealth, especially in terms of lives.
This is a very, very dangerous moment in the war. The reason for that is that Zelushny is someone who is very popular with the army. and with people in general. So if you look at that through American prism, that would be something analogous to President Truman firing General MacArthur, given that stakes for U.S. at that time were very high, but probably not as high as they are for Ukraine today.
In both cases, what is at stake is certainly the idea that the political leadership and military leadership have to be on the same page. And the question is whether, on the part of Zelensky, this is just the change of the leadership, or this is also the change of his approach to the war. And that can mean many things. One can mean him taking more active part in planning operations.
It can mean also possible change of the tactic in the war, given that counteroffensive didn't work out. We don't know yet. I don't know whether President Zelensky at this point knows exactly what will come next. But this is the time when the change of the leadership in the country and in the army that is at war, it's one of the most trying, most dangerous moments.
What we know is that in this war, Ukrainian people really united around their president. And the armed forces were always, even before the start of the war, more popular than was the presidential office. So the change, if happened in that realm, was not so dramatic. And from what I can see from social media in Ukraine, there is a lot of unhappiness, a lot of questions.
Showing 261–280 of 375 · page 14 of 19
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