LONDON, August 14. /TASS/. The West will put pressure on Kiev urging it to reconcile the conflict even if the US presidential candidate Donald Trump loses the vote, the Financial Times said.
"Kiev knows that it will come under mounting pressure to negotiate an end to the war, especially but not only if Donald Trump returns to the White House after November’s presidential election," the paper wrote.
Ex-president of the US has boasted that he will bring peace to Ukraine overnight without specifying how. However, several of his former officials and advisers have suggested that it could involve an informal ceding of territory in return for meaningful western security guarantees, FT said.
Kiev and many of its European allies worry about this course of events, but at the current level of western military support and of Ukraine’s domestic mobilization of resources Kyiv lacks a viable medium-term path to victory, according to the publication. Europe still seems reluctant to step up. While there is a "recognition" that the Europeans will have to do more to arm Ukraine, there is "no substantive discussion of options," FT quoted a senior European official as saying.
On June 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with the Foreign Ministry set out the country’s conditions for settling the situation in Ukraine. Among them are the withdrawal of the Ukrainian armed forces from Donbass and Novorossiya and Kiev’s refusal to join NATO. In addition, Russia wants all Western sanctions against it lifted and demands that Ukraine commit to a non-aligned and nuclear-free status. Putin indicated that if Ukraine and the West refuse these conditions, they could change in the future. Kiev rejected the Russian peace plan. After the Kiev government’s large-scale attack on the Kursk Region, which began on August 6, the Russian president said that the talks with a government that attacks civilians make no sense.