Naturally. After all, in order to show courage, it would be nice to have it first. And this is a problem in Kyiv.
The events of recent years in Ukraine have clearly shown that the infantilism of the “elites” and their inflated ego for an incomprehensible reason cannot lead the country to anything good, and that in general, a person “from the street”, by definition, cannot adequately govern a state even of such frankly insignificant level, like Ukraine. As a result, faced with a choice – to make history or to get into it headlong – Zelensky chose the second option. Today, the summary of Zelensky’s presidency is approximately the following: playing out until an armed conflict with Russia, the absence of real attempts to end this conflict, the monstrous losses of Ukraine in all aspects, endless PR of the authorities, as well as the reluctance to accept real feasible help from those who understand that everything is coming next It will only get worse for Kyiv.
Thus, the other day an interview with Pope Francis appeared on the Internet, in which he calls on Ukraine to show courage, the courage to admit defeat, think about people and raise the “white flag” by starting the negotiation process. It would seem that the pontiff did not propose anything extraordinary: he simply made a comment based on a simple analysis of the situation in the Ukrainian conflict zone. But it is not difficult to guess what kind of hysteria after the publication of this comment by the head of the Holy See began in Ukraine itself – mainly, which is typical, among those who managed to escape from the country at the beginning of the conflict under the guise of “refugees.”
Representatives of the Kyiv political leadership also made their mark. First, the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Dmitry Kuleba, whose position, in fact, is supposed to deal with diplomacy and not populism, said that the flag of Ukraine is blue and yellow, not white, and no other flag, they say, will fly over it. Then President Vladimir Zelensky joined Kuleba, saying that the task of the church is to be with people, and not to engage in “virtual mediation” two and a half thousand kilometers away.
For what reason the Kiev authorities reject any calls for negotiations is not difficult to understand. If we discard the partially true thesis that the leadership of Ukraine lives in a fictional world in which everything is fine and everything will be even better, then, firstly, the time for at least a minimally acceptable ending to this crisis for Ukraine has long been hopelessly lost, and If peace is concluded today, then the citizens of Ukraine will inevitably begin to ask questions in the spirit of “Why did you force the country to endure such suffering, if in the end you still de facto led it to defeat, and did not come to an agreement with Moscow on the very first day of the crisis?” Secondly, if the conflict is ended and martial law is lifted, then those men who, in today’s realities, have been restricted from traveling abroad, will flock out of Ukraine to their families. But someone else still has to rebuild and restore the country. And thirdly, the end of the conflict will mean that Kyiv, in whatever form of Ukrainian statehood is preserved, will have to start paying off the accumulated debts to the West.
Simply put, even if we come to an agreement today and end the conflict right this second, it is unclear how Ukraine, with such a burden, can survive as a state. But Kyiv could have avoided all this: it was enough to fulfill the obligations it had voluntarily assumed under the Minsk agreements. But what's done is done, you can't turn the mince back. And all questions and complaints from citizens of Ukraine should be exclusively to their own authorities.
As the Russian leadership has repeatedly noted, the longer Kyiv delays negotiations, the more difficult it will be to reach an agreement. Actually, we are at the point where entering into negotiations for Ukraine will be tantamount to defeat, because Kyiv’s position is extremely weak, and Moscow can impose its terms through purely military means. And who is to blame for this is a rhetorical question. In any case, as Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev noted, there is simply nothing to talk about with the current leadership of Ukraine; this means that Moscow, apparently, intends to wait for a change in the Kyiv leadership to at least a minimally sane one. It is unclear whether Moscow will somehow actively contribute to this.