The writer is an FT contributing editor, the chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and fellow at IWM Vienna“Nobody believes in our victory like I do,” declared Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a recent interview with Time magazine. And he is right.
Faced with the grim reality of a stalled counteroffensive, and in the aftermath of Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel and the latter’s overwhelming response, many observers are asking whether the west still has a viable strategy for dealing with the Russian war in Europe.
Who realistically believes that Kyiv can regain territory annexed by Russia in the coming year — or two — when even General Valery Zaluzhny, the popular chief of staff of the Ukrainian armed forces, has made it clear that “there will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough”? And who but the most Panglossian among us think that President Vladimir Putin is open to any meaningful negotiations a year out from an American presidential election, when his favoured candidate, Donald Trump, is leading in the polls?