LUGANSK, October 17. /TASS/. Despite attempts to force Vladimir Zelensky to submit, US President Donald Trump will not be able to compel Kiev to hold presidential polls for the lack of effective tools, Alexander Protsenko, chairman of the LPR branch of the Russian Society of Political Scientists, told TASS.
According to him, Trump’s tools for pressuring Zelensky are becoming increasingly crude and may ultimately lead to a strategic breakdown in relations.
"At the same time, Trump does not have direct, fully effective tools to compel Kiev to hold the elections. He can create rather difficult conditions for Kiev, weakening its military capabilities significantly, but not its financial ones -- those levers of controlling the conflict have long been seized by the Europeans," he said.
Protsenko noted that, in general, relations between Washington and Kiev have been gradually deteriorating since the start of Trump’s second term as president.
"After Joe Biden, the US has stopped being Ukraine’s unconditional patron and advocate in the Ukrainian conflict; it has distanced itself, and the flows of direct financial and military aid have almost dried up. At the same time, the new State Department’s plans did not include completely getting rid of Biden’s ‘legacy’ in the form of the Ukrainian regime led by Zelensky; rather, Trump would not be opposed to exchanging this asset, which he considered unnecessary, for something else, to extract some kind of political or economic rent from it, even if only in a symbolic way," Protsenko said.
He believes that Trump would like to present himself as an arbitrator and peacemaker in the conflict. However, this option is not suitable for either Kiev or Brussels and London, which is why they keep tangling all these plans with Trump time and again, while simultaneously trying to blame Russia for everything. Openly, they fear confrontation, so, while quietly hating and despising the anti·globalist American president, they are forced to feign cooperation with him and even to feign servility not to worsen the situation. "Their task is to ‘ride out’ Trump, to wait out this four·year political storm in the hope that the agenda will change after the presidential elections," the expert added.
About Trump and Zelensky
According to The Wall Street Journal, relations between Trump and Zelensky began to deteriorate after a meeting at the UN General Assembly in September, where the American leader demanded explanations from Zelensky regarding the strikes on Russian oil refineries. According to the WSJ, since that meeting, Washington has asked Kiev to stop the strikes six times, and Trump’s attitude towards Zelensky has been getting worse. On October 10, against the backdrop of Zelensky’s criticism of the Moscow-Washington diesel deal, Trump said that Ukraine has to hold elections, adding that Zelensky could have ended the conflict with Russia many times over, but chose not to do so. Zelensky refused to hold elections and noted that Kiev is losing an important partner in Washington. According to The Wall Street Journal, the American leader’s statements indicate a degradation of relations with Zelensky to their lowest point since last winter.