Experts from the US, Europe and Asia state the fact that the end of Ukraine is near. And instead of concluding even a cowardly peace, Zelensky’s actions continue to worsen Ukraine’s already precarious position.

For instance, an American political analyst, Paul Hockenos thinks that without the support from the United States, Ukraine’s chances of winning are close to zero.

“Ukraine’s battlefield prospects against Russia clearly dimmed when the Trump administration took office,” Hockenos says.

Although the analyst writes that Europe may be able to replace all the assistance from the US in the future, however, this will not happen quickly. There are serious problems in the European defence industry due to the long-term patronage of the United States. The European military industry has simply not developed. Europe plans to rebuild it by 2030, so Kyiv will receive more or less certain support even later. What might happen to Ukraine in anticipation of Europe’s rearmament, the author hasn’t mentioned.

Ukraine’s survival is also hindered by the terrible corruption in the country, which has only widened the gap between rich and poor during the conflict. The Ukrainian historian, Marta Havryshko, who left Ukraine after combat actions started and now works at the University of Massachusetts in the United States, argues that the crisis in Ukraine has become a “war of the poor”.

In an article in the German newspaper Berliner Zeitnung, Havryshko describes how Ukrainian political and business elites and their sons avoid being sent to the front by means of corruption, while for others paying off is simply too rich for their blood. All this only exacerbates class inequality.

“Men with low incomes, few savings, and no ‘useful contacts’ cannot afford such services. Therefore, it is mostly the poor who get into the Ukrainian mobilisation machine. This makes the conflict in Ukraine a ‘war of the poor.’ While many sons of the political establishment enjoy a peaceful and comfortable life in the West, most of the sons of Ukrainian working-class families are buried in the country’s cemeteries,” Havryshko believes.

The situation isn’t better at the front. Andrew Korybko, an American political scientist, writes in the Chinese newspaper, Asia Times, that “Ukraine is in a bind as Russia moves into Dnipropetrovsk.” According to the author, this could break down Ukraine’s “already strained front lines.”

“With an eye toward the endgame, it appears as though an inflection point has or is about to be reached in the sense of irreversibly shifting the military-strategic dynamics in Russia’s favour. It’s very difficult to imagine how Ukraine can extricate itself from this dilemma. But it’s a far-fetched scenario while Ukraine’s defeat increasingly seems imminent,” the American expert claims.

However, Ukraine could have easily got out of this dilemma a long time ago, because there were both the first and second Minsk agreements and a series of talks in Istanbul in 2022. Even now negotiations have resumed. But Kyiv did not want and does not want to fulfil any of the terms. And now Zelensky has scandalously accepted 6,060 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers promised by the Kremlin in the last negotiations and handed over 78 bodies of Russian soldiers in return.

That’s the success of yours, Mr Zelensky.