The ISW made the assessment in its latest report on the war in Ukraine, published on Thursday night.
The Washington-based think tank said: “Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to refuse to treat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as an equal and sovereign counterpart, further indicating that Putin is not interested in serious negotiations with Ukraine.”
The US experts added that Putin “did not react” to Zelensky’s remarks to the US Congress in Washington earlier this week, but instead “oriented his December 22 press conference on US and Western influence over Ukraine.”
According to the ISW, Putin "reiterated his boilerplate and false claims that the US and Western countries have intervened in Ukraine since the Soviet Union, driving a wedge in the supposed Russian-Ukrainian historic and cultural unity.”
Such statements "are meant to suggest that Ukraine’s 1991 emergence as a sovereign state was a sham,” the US think tank said.
The American experts added that Putin also “restated Russia’s maximalist goal of ‘protecting’ the Ukrainian people from their government, implying that Russia intends to force the Kyiv government to capitulate.”
In his remarks, Putin “mentioned Ukraine as a state only to note falsely that Ukraine had barred itself from negotiating with Russia,” the ISW wrote.
Putin 'denies Ukraine's legitimacy as a sovereign state'
According to the US think tank, Putin’s rhetoric represents an element of “an ongoing Russian information operation that denies Ukraine’s legitimacy as a sovereign state.”
For instance, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that “Zelensky’s speech to the US Congress and the US transfer to Ukraine of the Patriot air-defense systems only ‘proves’ that the United States is fighting a proxy war in Ukraine, and that there are no signs of readiness for peace talks,” the ISW reported.
Moreover, Putin “implied that Russia had hoped that the West would coach Ukraine into abiding by the Minsk Agreements but instead was fooled by Kyiv,” the US experts noted.
They cautioned that such an interpretation “aims to disqualify Ukraine from future direct negotiations under the false premises that Ukraine violated the Minsk Agreements and that Kyiv is not an independent actor.”
Putin wants direct talks with the West, bypassing Ukraine?
The ISW assessed that Putin‘s and Peskov’s statements “are components of an effort to persuade the United States and NATO to bypass Ukraine and negotiate directly with Russia over Zelensky’s head.”
According to the US experts, this effort is “very unlikely to succeed given repeated statements by US and European leaders regarding their determination that Ukraine will decide its own course.”
The ISW warned that the Kremlin’s information operation “is also likely meant to focus blame for ‘protracting’ the war on Zelensky’s supposed intransigence and thereby wear down US and European willingness to continue supporting Ukrainian efforts to liberate occupied Ukrainian land.”
Furthermore, Putin “amplified another existing Russian information operation designed to decrease Western security assistance for Ukraine,” according to the US think tank.
He “falsely accused the United States of protracting the war in Ukraine by providing Patriot air defense systems and vaguely implied that these systems will not perform a defensive purpose,” the ISW reported.
Zelensky’s US trip included train ride to Poland: reports
Meanwhile, The Guardian on Friday outlined the logistics of Zelensky’s surprise visit to America two days earlier.
According to the UK newspaper, the Ukrainian president’s trip to Washington, his first overseas visit since the Russian invasion began on February 24, started with “a secretive train ride to Poland” on Tuesday night.
On Wednesday morning, Zelensky arrived in the southern Polish city of Przemyśl, where he was spotted at the train station alongside the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, according to footage from Poland’s private broadcaster TVN, The Guardian reported on its website.
In Poland, Zelensky boarded a US government plane, which landed around noon EST on Wednesday at Joint Base Andrews in the US state of Maryland, near Washington, D.C.
Zelensky then travelled by motorcade to Blair House, the US presidential guest house on Pennsylvania Avenue, to freshen up from his trip, before going to the White House, where he was greeted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, according to The Guardian.
Russia’s Wagner Group, North Korea deny arms deal
Meanwhile, the owner of Russia’s Wagner Group of mercenaries has denied that the private military company has received weapons from North Korea, the Reuters news agency reported on Thursday night.
Yevgeny Prigozhin dismissed such reports as “gossip and speculation.”
He said in a statement, as quoted by Reuters: "Everyone knows that North Korea has not been supplying any weapons to Russia for a long time. And no such efforts have even been made."
The White House said on Thursday that North Korea had completed an initial weapons delivery to the Wagner Group to help strengthen Russian troops in Ukraine, The Guardian reported.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s foreign ministry denied a report in Japanese media that Pyongyang had supplied munitions to Russia, describing it as “groundless.”
It also condemned the United States for supplying “lethal weapons,” to Ukraine, North Korea’s official KCNA news agency reported on Friday morning, according to The Guardian.
Friday is day 302 of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: understandingwar.org, Reuters, The Guardian