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.
This doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. It’s not the case that Russia is somehow holding back and has huge additional reserves and resources that it can throw at the conflict. The Russian military isn’t about to collapse or anything, but it’s not doing great either and has largely been exposed as far weaker than was previously supposed.
Yes I agree, particularly in the fact that the corruption and facade that was the Russian military reporting structure made it seem to Russian leadership that they were more powerful than they thought. This is the problem with having so many yes men surrounding an authoritarian leader.
However as we’re hitting the two year mark on the war soon, the Russian military has likely become more competent and less corrupt than before with the increased attention.
That’s a fair take and may well be accurate. I am no expert and accordingly don’t have a strong opinion either way, and that’s leaving aside the rather obvious point that most/many of our so-called “experts” keep getting it wrong in the first place.
Remember when Kyiv was going to fall in a matter of days, then that got adjusted into a matter of weeks and then months and now here we are a year and a half later?
The loud and clear lesson from that is that the so-called experts often don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.