Prof. Tatyana Dronzina to FACT: Despite the heroism, the Ukrainian side is in a worse position

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a few days ago that excluding his country from the negotiations between the US and Russia on the war in Ukraine would be "very dangerous". He called for more discussions between Kiev and Washington to develop a ceasefire plan. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the war has set Ukraine back 100 years. In what direction is the conflict developing... Prof. Tatyana Dronzina - lecturer at the Department of “Political Science” at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", an expert in conflict resolution, spoke to FACT.

- Prof. Dronzina, it will soon be three years since the beginning of Russia's "military operation" in Ukraine. How do you view the situation on the front. Who is in what position?
- Despite the heroism, the Ukrainian side is in a worse position. The responsibility for this is hardly entirely its own. Russia's numerical superiority, the attraction of foreign fighters and manpower, China's help, as well as India's pro-Russian neutrality, without which Russia would not have lasted a single day in this war, speak for themselves. To this we must add the supply of weapons to Russia from Iran and North Korea, but above all the indecisive position of the West, which in my opinion bears great responsibility for the Ukrainian failures, and the position itself at times bordered on pure mercenaryism with the Ukrainian cause.

Of course, I do not ignore the inability of the Zelensky government to deal with corruption and betrayal within its own ranks.

No normal person believes in sociological surveys conducted in wartime, and this is the reason why I do not comment on such. I will just say that in my opinion – If we exclude everything else, there are broad sectors of society in Ukraine that support Russia, and this is probably one of the most serious problems in this war.

- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the war means that the rules for mobilization cannot be changed and that if soldiers are allowed to return home en masse, then Russian President Vladimir Putin "… will kill us all". What kind of move is this, what kind of signal is this to the world?
- It is natural that the enthusiasm generated by defending the national cause will decrease over time. After all, it has been almost three years. Moreover, Ukraine is not the only country where the young, and not only the young population, is trying to get out of military service in a difficult and real military situation. We know this well from the Vietnam War, when the US lost despite clear military superiority because it could not cope with anti-war protests. Russia also mobilized by force. Sociological research by “Gallup“ from last year showed that only 30% of Bulgarians are ready to fight for their country during a war; 42 are strongly against. The percentages are comparable throughout the Western world. And in the East? People in Western Asia (77%) - in the Middle East (73%), where tensions are also currently high, as well as in India (76%), are much more willing to fight for their country. This statistic cannot be ignored. And let's not rush to blame the Ukrainians.

Imagine how many of us see ourselves or our loved ones in deadly battles.

For better or worse, peace must be negotiated - with the necessary guarantees for Ukraine and fair burdens for Russia.

- At the same time, we heard from Russian President Vladimir Putin that there was a possibility of ending the conflict as early as 2022, but US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson refused. Are these just words from Putin, or …
- We cannot know for sure, the security services would be better off saying whether this is a fact or a rumor. As long as we don't have evidence, I don't think it's right to discuss rumors.

- Joe Biden is gone, and Donald Trump is in power in the United States, who promised to end the war immediately. How can this happen?
- It can't happen - as we saw for ourselves. 24 hours turned into 100 days, a hundred days into half a year. Many point to the truce between Israel and "Hamas" as a precedent, which - as the president himself put it - happened before he took office. These are, of course, myths. The truce was achieved because the parties wanted it to be achieved and were looking for an excuse to do it so as not to lose face. This is precisely why the US crushed the Taliban after 9/11 - because they were tired of the Afghans to death. In the case of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, no one wants a truce under Trump's extremely vague terms. Even more so after Zelensky's warnings that peace talks cannot be held without Ukraine's participation. As for the ability of the American president to convince Russia and to remain mysteriously silent about his talks with the Russian president, for the time being everything remains at the level of rumors and unverified allegations.

- Trump threatened Russia with new sanctions if Putin does not agree to sit at the negotiating table. But are the sanctions working? Russia has been subject to sanctions for several years now...
- Yes, he threatened it. But what will these sanctions be? Sanctions are already in place, but they are not being observed. “If we do not make a “deal” - and soon, I have no choice but to impose high taxes, duties and sanctions on everything that is sold from Russia to the United States,” Trump wrote in a post on social networks. But all this has already been used. Meanwhile, Peskov put it in an expressive way: there is nothing new in them. It seems to me that the West's attitude towards Russia is deeply mistaken:
- the decline in the quality of life will not reduce support for the war criminal Putin;
- harsh sanctions will not provoke a peace movement;
- and finally, attempts at flattering rhetoric towards the Russian president will remain a shot in the arm, because we saw how his courtship of the Korean dictator ended during his previous term.
With a gnat for Trump and the entire West. Not to mention the exact word.

- What levers of influence in this conflict do you see in Trump's hands?
- It seems to me that in this conflict Trump and Putin are playing it like two macho men, competing to see who is more macho. Levers of influence, of course, exist, but I am not convinced that they are being used through new sanctions against Russia. The American president will certainly seek them, as a failure would reflect badly on his image as a strongman and would mean that his term of office would begin with a failure. The levers of influence are neither new nor secret – mediation missions between the warring parties, establishing the extent to which they are ready for concessions, international peacekeeping forces. And so on. Unfortunately, the time when the disputed areas could be declared international protectorates is over. Now, above all, we need indisputable guarantees for Ukraine’s security and its admission to the EU and NATO. This will mean a series of painful elections for Ukraine. But no concessions, no negotiations, no solutions. With two conditions: they must be mutual and the cure must not be worse than the disease.

- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently said that the number of victims suffered by Ukrainians in the war emphasizes the need to quickly end this conflict. And there is already a change in his categorical position. Is he forced to speak like this anymore?
- Zelensky should have changed his position a long time ago. Flexibility does not mean betrayal or cowardice, but realism in relations with opponents. More and more Ukrainians think so, and this is probably one of the reasons why he does not agree to elections that have been knocking on the door for a long time. Of course, I do not exclude his fear of his being replaced by a pro-Russian government, which would be a terrible collapse for Europe, but I will say again - flexibility is a great virtue of a politician.

- What would be acceptable as an agreement to end the conflict - everything captured by Russia remains for them, and Ukraine loses territories. Is that how things look?
- What is acceptable is what both sides can accept, what politicians can win and voters can support.

It is difficult to defend in the field of diplomacy what has not been won on the battlefield.

But the conflict between Ukraine and Russia is so internationalized that international factors will be one of the decisive factors in its settlement. Moreover, history provides us with enough examples, and Adenauer's post-war Germany is one of them - when, through humility and compliance with the most humiliating agreements, the country returned to Europe to be one of its main drivers today.

- Where has the role of the European Union been lost in this conflict? Aid was given to Ukraine, but the effect was not what was sought. Ukraine is failing because...
- I am not the first, nor the last, to say that Europe needs leadership, which it currently lacks. We are observing an indecisive elite that is more afraid of losing its popularity than it is concerned about the EU becoming a real guarantor of its security.

I completely agree with the American president on one point - Europeans must learn to protect themselves.

Any political leader who takes a step in this direction will inevitably lose a significant part of his popularity - the aging and conservative European population, spoiled by long years of prosperity, is unlikely to warmly welcome such a measure. The necessary militarization of the EU will probably also cause a deep crisis in European self-awareness, in whose matrix the values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights are embedded. But at a time when geopolitics is returning with brutal force, any other course of action would be naive and shortsighted. The EU may be the world's largest donor, but what good is that if it cannot defend itself and its allies?