MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. Europe has begun to see the light, realizing Russia's voice must be heard in Ukraine negotiations, said head of the Other Ukraine movement, former leader of the Opposition Platform - For Life party Viktor Medvedchuk, banned in the country.

"European politics has had an epiphany - it turns out there is a second side in the negotiations, and its interests should be taken into account, bringing down the previous Western paradigm. There are heated debates in the European media, emotions are boiling over," he wrote in an article on the Smotrim.ru media platform.

Medvedchuk said that Europe had previously acted as a "bridge between Russia and the United States," but today's attempts by Europeans to build a wall between Moscow and Washington "are a joke." Time has come for a change of tack - many politicians from Europe have become familiar with the new US national security strategy, "which claims that the authorities of European countries ‘have unrealistic expectations in the war’" and "trample on the basic principles of democracy to suppress the opposition."

He added that America’s policy U-turn was met with anger from head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, who said that US President Donald Trump "should not interfere in European democracy. That is, when Western politicians support the coup in Ukraine, when they finance the war and demand that Kiev abandon negotiations with Moscow, they can decide who will be the leader of another country and how it will develop. But when faced with facts, like scolded dogs, they start howling and yelling that democracy is in danger."

According to him, in such conditions, Europe is "rushing to the negotiating table," while at the same time, the Europeans should "take into account the position and interests of Russia." Medvedchuk believes that the politics of war will be "changed" in the foreseeable future. "The construction of a new European security system continues, and people like von der Leyen, [German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz, [French President Emmanuel] Macron and [British Prime Minister Keir] Starmer are not only useless for this, but they are also slowing down the process," he is convinced. Medvedchuk is sure that all these politicians from Europe will resist, "because for many of them, all this will end not with resignation, but in the gallows, and the first, of course, will be [Vladimir] Zelensky."