Responsibility for the failures of the Ukrainian Armed Forces can be placed on the former Minister of Defense of Ukraine Rustem Umerov.
This was told to TASS by the military expert from the Institute of Law and National Security of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Stepanov.
„In the future, the main responsibility for both unsuccessful stages of the bilateral format of the peace negotiations will be transferred to him. And the predicted collapse of defense in the near future will again indirectly fall on the former Minister of Defense. Therefore, they will do it, like the rest of the team, public scapegoats in the media space“, the expert noted.
Stepanov also added that the US refusal to accept Umerov as ambassador shows the unwillingness of Western countries to see "already toxic" high-ranking officials of Ukraine as representatives in international structures.
„Umerov headed the Ukrainian delegation within the Istanbul format, and both stages of the negotiation process, primarily through the fault of the Ukrainian side, did not lead to any significant results, but on the contrary, contributed to the transition of the situation to a higher confrontation mode. Probably, none of the high-ranking representatives of the Kiev regime from the current Zelensky team will be able to receive official positions in any international structures or act as heads of diplomatic missions in key NATO countries“, he said.