WASHINGTON, September 5. /TASS/. Members of the Ukrainian government have been unable to come up with clear enough explanations of how exactly Kiev might emerge from the conflict as a winner, Raphael Cohen, the director of one of the programs of the leading US think tank RAND Corporation (its activities are recognized as undesirable in Russia), said in an article in Foreign Policy magazine.
"Practically every one of the dozens of Ukrainians whom I interviewed - at different levels of seniority, both inside and outside of government - recognized the need for victory and the existential stakes at hand, but few were able to articulate just how Ukraine would come out victorious," he said.
Cohen emphasized that when he visited Ukraine in August, he "could see exhaustion in everyone's faces, from officials in the government to think tank researchers to people on the street."
"Perhaps this is why more Ukrainians have become open to a negotiated end to the war, albeit not on Russian President Vladimir Putin's terms," the expert added.
On June 14, Putin at a meeting with the Foreign Ministry leadership named the conditions for a settlement in Ukraine, among them the withdrawal of the Ukrainian army from Donbass and Novorossiya and Kiev's pledge not to join NATO. In addition, Russia considers necessary the lifting of all Western sanctions against it and the establishment of Ukraine's non-aligned and nuclear-free status. Putin indicated that if Ukraine and the West rejected these conditions, they could change in the future. Kiev rejected the Russian peace plan.