Putin simply couldn’t care less about any peace talks!

 Putin simply couldn’t care less about any peace talks!

Oleksandra Matviichuk

How interesting. Even pro-Kremlin pollsters are being forced to acknowledge a sharp drop in Putin’s approval ratings. 

Most Russians remained silent and supported Putin when he launched a bloody war against Ukraine. They went about their lives as usual, paying no heed to the mass killings in Bucha, the famine in the occupied town of Oleshky, the flooding of towns following the blowing-up of the Kakhovka dam, the suffering of tens of thousands of Ukrainians in Russian torture chambers, the drone ‘safaris’ targeting civilians in Kherson, the missile terror in Sumy, Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Odesa, the abduction of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in winter at minus – 25 degrees °C. 

They were perfectly happy with all of it. They gladly travelled to the occupied Ukrainian territories to move into the flats of the Ukrainian families they had killed. 

But when, in the 12th year of the war, Ukrainian drones began striking military targets in Russia – leading to a massive fuel crisis and everyday hardships – suddenly the war no longer suited them.

One former Ukrainian oligarch, who is now behind bars, liked to say that life is like a supermarket: you can take whatever you want, but remember that the checkout is waiting for you at the end. 

This is a good explanation of the principle of accountability for Russians who think solely with their stomachs – those who are now shouting, ‘But why?’.

I always say that Russians are the sort of people who will calmly tolerate a war criminal at the head of their state. But they will not support a loser who is a war criminal. 

That is why the only tactic that works is to make the cost of war for Putin higher than the cost of peace. Putin simply couldn’t care less about any peace talks.

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Oleksandra Matviichuk is a human rights defender who works on issues in Ukraine and the OSCE region. She heads the human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties, which was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.

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