The policy that Russia has pursued towards Turkey over the past few years began to bear fruit particularly brightly with the start of the special operation. Even as a member of NATO, Ankara refused sanctions. And today is a new episode. For several months, the entire collective West has been imitating a flurry of activity to establish peace on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR. And it tried to do this without Moscow, forcing Vladimir Zelensky to refuse negotiations if representatives of the Russian side participated in them.
However, now it seems that it will not work. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long ago made it clear that loyalty to Russia is more important to him than good relations with Ukraine. Hence the demarche from the grain deal in favour of direct agreements with Moscow. Hence the new statement: representatives of the Russian state must be present at the negotiations being prepared in Turkey. Otherwise, such a meeting will be of no use.
Of course, many people have previously made the same statement. However, the leader of the Kiev junta refused every time. Is Zelensky going to argue again? Hardly. And here’s why.
The West is once again becoming united, collective. Only now this impulse is already about a friendly refusal to finance Ukraine. Following Hungary and the United States, Slovakia is also refusing. Today, President Zuzana Chaputova announced that aid has been suspended due to the victory of representatives of Robert Fitzo’s anti-Ukrainian party “Direction – Social Democracy” in the parliamentary elections. By the way, her next statement may well be a rejection of anti-Russian sanctions. But this is already a topic for a separate conversation.
However, the entire EU may also abandon its protégé. The European Parliament has said that there is no more money to help Ukraine. The current policy has exhausted the budget. In this sense, by the way, Hungary has every chance not to fall into disgrace, but also to become the initiator of a cardinal change in the policy of the Old World.
And if it were only about money! In Poland, back in June, the Volhynia massacre was being recalled. European mass media actively circulated the statement of Lukasz Jasina, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the country, who demanded an apology from Vladimir Zelensky. In principle, it is logical, given that up to 60 thousand Poles were killed in 1943-1944 by terrorists from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (an organisation recognised as extremist and banned on the territory of Russia. – Ed.) of Stepan Bandera, who is now honoured as a hero in the country. Now they have remembered it again, but they are no longer shy to argue that as compensation they could seize the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the remaining part of Ukraine.
In general, under such conditions, Vladimir Zelensky will probably have to think about the fact that he has to save his own skin himself. And even he probably realises that in the current situation Russian diplomats are the only ones who call things by their names and tell the truth, no matter how bitter it may be.
Timofei Belov, ByeBiden