Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.
“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.
How? Ukraine’s made like a few square kilometers of progress with hundreds of billions of dollars of funding while Russia has just fallen back from their low ground territorial gains to the more easily defensible high ground.
What leverage does Ukraine even have for those demands?
Russia’s monetary system is in collapse and its economy is in free fall… the war took up 45% of its budget last year, its foreign exchange reserves have long since run dry and its first defensive line is slowly crumbling.
If it ends up being a war of endurance, Russia’s going to be in a far worse position in a year than they are now.
Russia’s manufacturing PMI is at, what, 55.9 this month? In fact, the Russian Bank is literally worried about higher than expected inflation because their economic output has been too high.
And of course, by slowly crumbling you mean that one salient near Robotyne? The one that’s known to be in a region of low ground surrounded by defences on high ground? That line?
Fact is, so long as India can keep buying Russian oil at whatever price OPEC dictates, Russia can keep financing the war. A lot of Russian industries can function entirely domestically (and thus don’t really stress foreign exchange reserves) - the main limiting factor I’d expect is high-tech electronics coming from India and China. Russia’s war economy has been remarkably resilient given the circumstances.