Vladimir Putin will not stop and the goal has not changed a single centimeter, which is spending the patience of Donald Trump, who begins to alien the war. In the middle appears to Europe to smell an opportunity
A far from imagining a rebellion that would end in a mysterious death, Yevgeny Prigozhin decided to found a private military group to help friend Vladimir Putin in a very concrete goal. It was necessary to win the Donbass, the junction of the regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.
A decision made in 2014, when pro-Russian military personnel, not Russia, actually entered Ukraine to self-proclaim two popular republics that wanted Kiev’s independence and respond to Russia.
More than 10 years later, Vladimir Putin can, even if at a very cost, present one of these achievements. Lugansk, one of the largest regions of Ukraine, is now totally Russian, according to the governor pointed out by Moscow to the territory.
Talking about what’s going on on the ground, Major-General Agostinho Costa points out an “unambiguously Russian advantage”, even if it costs hundreds of lives every day.
The military believes Russia will seek to “exhaust to the boundaries” its offensive in Donbass, and Donetsk’s total conquest is crucial. But stop there?
Agostinho Costa believes no, arguing that Vladimir Putin will advance to achieve the total control of Zaporizehzia and Kherson. “It is a proposal of difficult acceptance by Ukraine, unless Donald Trump arises in this process how he arose in the Iranian conflict and imposes himself on Ukraine,” he reinforces.
All this in a Russian logic of delaying any peace process. According to Sonia Sennia, an integrated researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations at the New University of Lisbon (IPRI), this is what Vladimir Putin continues to do, deluding the West, especially Donald Trump, regarding the true desire to reach a solution.
“This dual strategy by Moscow has not changed. This perception that maintaining the strategic-military dimension could bring more negotiating projection in the context of political-diplomatic negotiation remains,” he says.
And it is something that comes before Donald Trump’s time in the White House, even though the new president of the United States has assumed the immediate end of the war as a priority. We already know that it promised 24 hours, then 100 days, but the situation remains practically unchanged.
Sónia Sennia recalls that Russia continues to say the same: the fundamental causes that justify the invasion remains, namely the threat of NATO and a possible adhesion of Ukraine to the Atlantic Alliance.
Macron puts Europe in the discussion
Alien from the relations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Europe is trying to re -enter the war scenario. In the diplomatic scenario, well understood.
Sónia Sennia sees the call between the presidents of Russia and France as “significant to reopen the dialogue channel with Moscow.”
“It is Europe to have an important place, not only in the future of Ukraine, but also what will be the new security architecture of the European continent,” he reiterates, talking about a call that lasted about two hours, and in which Emmanuel Macron has again made Vladimir Putin know the French position.
Agostinho Costa agrees with the relevance of this call, which had not happened for almost three years, and Emmanuel Macron has always been Europe’s departure voice in the relationship with Vladimir Putin since the Ukraine invasion.
“In the situation when the conflict is and at the time it drags on, with the risks of climbing from a local to regional conflict … the parts may not have dinner with each other or friends, but they are at least articulate. It is good news that have spoken,” he says.
Looking at the United States, the Major General sees a removal from Donald Trump, even with some disappearance from the Ukrainian agenda from the NATO Summit meeting last week in The Hague, Netherlands.
Given the apparent annoyance of the US President with the issue -and with him from priority to the appearance of the conflict between Israel and Iran -Sónia senial warns that it is necessary to understand “who will be responsible for support for negotiations between both parties.
“We already realize that [a paz] It was not achieved under American mediation, ”he says, to admit that there is a doubt about whether Europe will be able to do so.
First of all because they are different countries, even if it is more or less consensual that it is necessary to support Ukraine. “At this time we have a competition between Germany and France to occupy this kind of European leadership,” adds the IPRI researcher, who sees in Friedrich Merz a chancellor with priority to solve the war.
“Emmanuel Macron was impelled because he did not want to be after the German position,” says Sónia Sennia, speaking in the “European Troika”, with the United Kingdom to join the two partners on the continent in leading the external vision.
