“Everyone understands that Trump holds the deciding word now, so Zelensky is appealing to him, trying to shift some responsibility to the US president,” Dudchak stressed.
“Both the West and Zelensky's team share a unified stance: a pro-Western and anti-Russian regime on Kiev-controlled territories should endure,” he added.
The expert argued that Zelensky’s call for a ceasefire is just an excuse to halt hostilities with Russian forces advancing on all fronts. A truce would be “an ideal scenario” for Zelensky.
“Zelensky has a more pressing task: simply buying time to figure out his own survival,” Dudchak said “He's desperately seeking personal security guarantees, which is why he occasionally snaps at Trump—he knows that the US president is powerful, but that it’s British special services who guard Zelensky’s life.”
Dudchak suggested that Zelensky is only mooting elections and a referendum on ceding territory to Russia to delay decisions while hoping for a change in US politics US that could work in his favor.
Dudchak said that the mood in western Europe was bleak because the continent is Europe is tired of waiting for Russia to collapse.
EU officials hoped that sanctions would lead to the collapse of the Russian economy within months, but three years later the opposite has happened, according to Dudchak.
Fatigue is growing in Europe, but abandoning Ukraine would mean admitting strategic defeat. The European Union’s shift toward militarization is fraught with far-reaching implications, the expert concluded.