The war in Ukraine is the main topic of an article in the American newspaper "Wall Street Journal", BTA reported.
The battle for Pokrovsk is indicative of Russian leader Vladimir Putin's goals and the problems with peace talks, the "Wall Street Journal" writes.
When the Russians finally began to outmaneuver the Ukrainians in Pokrovsk in recent weeks, the city was reduced to ruins and bodies littered the streets, an article in the American publication says.
US President Donald Trump is calling on the two sides to stop killing each other and is trying to use the negotiations over territory as a tool to settle the conflict. For Putin, the stakes in the war are much higher than the region in eastern Ukraine, where most of the fighting is taking place.
Russia is willing to suffer huge human casualties in the hope of exhausting Ukraine’s resources and its will to keep fighting. Putin’s ultimate goal is to regain political influence over Kiev, restore Russia’s status as a great power and secure his place in history, Russia experts say.
"Trump is trying to solve a problem, and Putin, as we understand it, is guided by his views of Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great. "He thinks imperially," says William Courtney, a scholar and former U.S. ambassador.
In recent negotiations, the United States has focused on the Donbass as part of a possible peace deal, hoping that Putin might agree to a halt to the bloodshed if Kiev agreed to cede territory in eastern Ukraine.
But the shortsighted focus on territorial issues has led to an underestimation of how important it is for Putin to dominate Ukraine. Months before Russian forces invaded, Putin wrote a long essay in which he said that Russians and Ukrainians were "one people." He questioned Ukrainian statehood, saying that Ukraine was a creation of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.
"Ukraine is not just our neighbor, it is an integral part of our own history," he said in a televised address days before the invasion.
The Russian leader, who watched the collapse of the Soviet Union from East Germany, where he worked as a KGB officer, calls the collapse of the USSR "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century" - an event that has greater significance for the Russian president than two world wars and the Holocaust, the "Wall Street Journal" noted.
For Putin and his generation, the end of the Soviet Union brought poverty and humiliation to a country that had seen itself as America's equal. American businessmen came to the country to amass wealth by selling off state assets, while Western politicians lectured the new Russia on human rights and democracy. Moscow watched indifferently as its former satellites became part of the Western camp, joining the European Union and NATO.
"Putin is waging this war on principle, to undo the effects of the Cold War and to restore Russia to its great power status," said Ruslan Pukhov, founder of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a defense and arms industry think tank.
In Russia, great powers have the resources and military might to dictate their terms to smaller states. This is the position that Moscow adopted in the early days of the war, when Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Trump that Putin’s ambitions were not limited to territorial acquisitions.
Trump’s desire to make a deal with Russia has not gone unnoticed in Moscow. While Putin is reluctant to make concessions in Ukraine, Russia is trying to tempt the US government to lift its sanctions. It is no coincidence that the Kremlin tasked the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, with drawing the attention of Trump adviser Steve Witkoff, commented "The Wall Street Journal".
It is true that any serious diplomatic move should focus on some of the Kremlin's concerns regarding the future of Ukraine and the border with NATO, says political analyst and Russia expert Samuel Charap.
"The essence of the issue is not the seizure of territory. Some kind of agreement in principle on the big issues is needed," he explains.
In recent weeks, however, the pace of peace negotiations has increasingly increased Trump's dissatisfaction, notes "The Wall Street Journal".