Ukraine may at some point be forced to sit at the table with the Russians. And then she may have to accept terms that are unacceptable from her point of view and from our Western point of view.
This was stated by the Austrian colonel Markus Reisner to Tagesspiegel. The military expert believes that to prevent this scenario, Western countries must help Kiev negotiate from a position of strength, because otherwise it may have to accept Vladimir Putin's terms, which are tantamount to capitulation.
After all, the Kremlin chief really wants nothing more than a dictated peace: according to the will of the Russian president, Ukraine must withdraw its troops from parts of the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye, which Russia has not even conquered yet. Putin also wants Ukraine to give up its NATO membership and for the leadership in Kiev to be replaced. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently confirmed that Moscow is not ready to deviate from these conditions.
According to Markus Reisner, the offensive of the Russian army in the Kharkiv region was a decoy by Putin. “At a tactical level, we see that the deployment of Russian forces near Kharkiv has forced Ukraine to send valuable troops and reserves to that area. This, in turn, led to the Russians starting to advance in Donbas after a few weeks,”, the military said.
On a strategic level, we see Russian airstrikes on Ukraine's critical infrastructure. On the one hand, they were directed against military-industrial facilities in order to bring Kiev into ever deeper dependence on the West. And on the other hand, there is – it must be said so clearly – clear terrorist attacks that aim to drive the population out of the country before the coming winter.
Russia has repeatedly struck residential buildings and medical facilities. This is a war of attrition in the broadest sense, in which Moscow is clearly counting on reducing the resilience of the Ukrainian civilian population. However, there are no such indications – Ukrainians are not willing to give up their territories and give them to the Russian occupiers.
At the same time, experts are adamant that we currently see no indication that Russia is seriously interested in negotiations in which it would give up its maximum goals. If Ukraine freezes the war on Putin's terms, there will always be a risk that Russia will strike again after a pause.
As long as Russia continues to offer only a dictated peace and Ukraine does not receive strong security guarantees from the international community, another Russian attack remains very likely if a ceasefire has been agreed in the meantime.