Zelensky will be made to start thinking about truce?
In last days ten days there have been a great deal of articles, expert commentaries and various forecasts in the popular media that have common ground. The Ukrainian offensive is significantly less successful than it was expected. It demands a lot of material resources and human casualties, but fails to bring the desired results. As Julian Borger, the Guardian’s world affairs editor put it: “hopes of a rapid breakthrough proved over-optimistic”. At the same time, it is often stressed that the West should have patience and continue provide support for Ukraine even if the offensive would not reach goals promised by the Ukrainian government.
I am convinced that this message, transmitted by different media, can be interpreted only as a suggestion to make Zelensky stop wasting Ukrainian military personnel and Western military equipment in senseless offensive operations that cost too much and change almost nothing.
But why this spread opinion has been spread so wide in recent days?
I think it can be connected with the Peace Summit which is due to take place on August 5 and 6, in the city of Saudi Arabia. It was organized on Ukraine’s on initiative, and Zelensky seems to hope that some 30 countries that are going to attend it, will gather to promote his so called “formula for peace”, which is nothing more but a demand of Russian capitulation.
Russia is not going to surrender and it will be of no use to organize international summit to discuss this issue. But if the cease-fire can be established, its conditions should be backed up international community. In that case the summit is required and Saudi Arabia, which has managed to strengthen its connections with Russia remaining the US strategic ally seems the perfect place for such an event. And the Western public opinion has been already prepared for the idea of immediate truce by descriptions of Ukrainian failure to recapture the occupied territories by force.
The summit in Saudi Arabia appears to be aimed at making Zelensky accept the idea of immediate ceasefire.
Molchanov Kyryl,