The last week has provided even more evidence that Russia has acknowledged its failure to achieve its stated goal of conquering Ukraine by military force.. Against the backdrop of negotiations, the Russian army abandoned attempts to cordon off Kyiv. And there were considerations that this may be due to the primary goal of the Russian war to capture only the territory in the east of the country.

And even earlier, the peace dialogue between Russia and Ukraine began to move to the phase of more substantive discussions. Although earlier Moscow simply announced its ultimatums, writes The Guardian. Russia's statement about reducing operations around Kyiv and concentrating the offensive in the Donbass is one of the rare cases when the words of the Russian Ministry of Defense turned out to be true. The " I don't understand why she makes such ads at all..

Russia presented the withdrawal of its forces from Kyiv as a concession in order to allegedly " But it was obvious that the Russian offensive on this front had failed and in some cases was driven back by the Ukrainian army.. The turn to operations in the east and the rollover of the defeated Russian units from the northern flank is an admission on the part of Moscow that it no longer has the forces necessary to conquer all of Ukraine.

[see_also ids\u003d"

In fact, Russia has to pull the remnants of its manpower just to keep current operations active.. Building up its forces before the invasion, Moscow drew troops from all over, including the Arctic and the Far East. Now most of these troops have been defeated in battle. Therefore, Russia is pulling together all possible remnants of forces from all possible sources, including the recruitment of mercenaries in Syria.

The current Ukrainian success in repelling the Russian offensive means that the entire country is now not threatened by occupation. However, this does not mean that the risks for the future of Ukraine as a sovereign country have also disappeared.. Russia has repeatedly started catastrophic wars in the past, but then got its way, pulling soldiers and resources onto the battlefield in order to simply suffocate the enemy with mass. The danger is that the Russian Federation may wage a war of attrition, despite heavy losses among ill-trained soldiers or a collapse of the economy.. The question is whether Ukraine will be able to maintain the interest and support of the West for as long.

[see_also ids\u003d"

Meanwhile, Russia will continue to create humanitarian catastrophes to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to make concessions and end the fighting.. Kyiv will continue to be under threat. Abandoning attempts to go on the offensive and seize more territories around the capital does not mean that Russia will not carry out artillery and rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Zelensky has already hinted that Ukraine's neutral status would be an acceptable concession to end the war.. But such an exit in itself is fraught with danger.. Zelenskiy knows better than anyone that neutrality with “security guarantees” is exactly the status Ukraine had ten years ago.. And he did not prevent Russia from occupying Crimea and unleashing a war in the Donbass. For this to have any meaning, the same words need to hide a completely different international status.. In addition, there is a danger that the temporary ceasefire, so stubbornly supported by the West, may develop into a permanent division of the country, which will consolidate Russian territorial gains..

[see_also ids\u003d"

The publication writes that optimism gives resistance to the population in the territories that are now temporarily controlled by Russia.. But it is also a fact that Moscow is very successful in suppressing any resistance movements through the use of brutal force against the civilian population.. If Moscow wants to consolidate its power in the territories it now controls, the only thing that can thwart its plans is a more assertive offensive by the Ukrainian army..

In the end, much will depend on what Russia itself calls " She has already redrawn her original war aims. Because the ones she had at first she couldn't reach. The notion that Ukrainians are supposedly only “confused Russians” who are just waiting to be freed from “Nazis” in Kyiv was dispelled by the first contact with reality in Ukraine. No one rushes into the Russian arms. And Moscow has to pay dearly for every inch of Ukrainian territory..

[see_also ids\u003d"

So no matter what “victory” she is satisfied with, it is unlikely to be what Russia wanted to achieve at first.. But this is not important, since the Kremlin has a very tight grip on public opinion, convincing the population that the “liberation war” continues.. In fact, the Russian declaration of victory does not have to have anything to do with the actual outcome of the war..

But if Putin ends the war with the conviction that Russia has not lost, it will be a serious problem.. Nothing will stop him from planning new wars to conquer the peoples whose existence he calls a " Russia will need time to build its military and reorient its economy so that it can survive under sanctions. Putin's ambitions will be replaced by only one thing - a clear and undeniable defeat that cannot be hidden behind new fabrications about what Moscow supposedly wanted to achieve when it started the war.. Now, as at the beginning of this aggression, the West is obligated to help Ukraine inflict this defeat on Russia..