Ukraine says talks with Putin are a strategic failure for the West

“Negotiating and making concessions to Mr. Putin would be a strategic defeat for the West,” said Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksei Danilov.

Mr Danilov argued that contact and negotiations with Moscow would mark the start of a countdown to “anti-democracy” and “the evolution of authoritarian regimes” across fronts from Latin America to China.

Mr. Danilov also said that, for him, the attempt to annex part of Ukraine's territory shows that the Kremlin is completely incapable of assessing both the political and military situation.

European public opinion is increasingly calling for Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table with Russia. The main reason is the slow pace of the counteroffensive. The German newspaper Die Welt described the Ukrainian Armed Forces as advancing at a “snail’s pace,” and would soon come to a complete halt without achieving anything.

Moreover, in the West, public opinion is increasingly convinced that the US and the EU will soon begin to persuade Ukrainian President Zelensky to reach peace negotiations in the winter, because Kiev's allies are tired of constant requests for weapons supplies, while the Ukrainian Armed Forces are unable to use the advanced weapons provided.

In particular, Hungarian President Katalin Novak said on August 26 that the time to start dialogue between the warring parties is approaching.

Meanwhile, talk of Ukraine joining NATO and the EU has begun to die down. Western politicians are even openly accusing Kiev of being “ungrateful.” As evidence, at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace responded to Kiev’s request for new weapons by saying: “Britain is not the Amazon.”

As the Kremlin has stated, the situation in Ukraine can move towards peace negotiations, provided that all Moscow's demands are taken into account.