“Please do not underestimate this war criminal. He’s not an idiot. He’s a KGB operative,” former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yastenyuk said when asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin and a possible EU envoy at direct talks with the Kremlin.
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“Putin will choose someone he can recruit,” Yastenyuk said.
In an interview with Euronews’ Europe Today on Wednesday, Yastenyuk shared his advice for any talks with Putin based on his own experience meeting Russia’s leader.
“He always has a sense of whether you are weak or you are strong. So he makes a sniff test of each person he meets,” Yastenyuk recalled.
“It all depends on the personality who is to talk to Putin … and whether this personality, whether this political high-profile political figure would have additional ammo that supports his talk,” he explained.
Yet Yastenyuk believes no matter what initiatives are being discussed among the EU leaders, Moscow simply doesn’t want to talk to Brussels.
“Putin is not eager, he is not ready for any kind of talks at this particular juncture. Maybe he would accept some kind of negotiator with the only very simple and obvious reason to buy time and once again to outweigh it and to shit us.”
‘Putin is not ready to accept anyone’
Yatsenyuk insisted it is not about the names of potential candidates, but about Europe’s policy. “The only language Putin understands is the language of force and strength,” he said.
At this stage, Russia’s president is not “ready to accept anyone … But Putin is ready to accept Ukraine’s and actually European’s surrender. And we have to realise this.”
Yatsenyuk told Euronews this is also why Russia has intensified its threats not only towards Ukraine, but also towards the European diplomats in Kyiv and the Baltic states.
“Russia poses a huge threat to the security of the European Union and it was obvious that Russia will try to intimidate everyone, mainly the European Union,” he said when asked about the recent drone incursions in the Baltic countries.
“This is a part of Russia’s proxies war against the European Union and NATO. They want to intimidate the people of the European Union and they believe that in this case they will urge Europeans to turn its back on Ukrainians”.
This scenario “will never never come to fruition,” he said, as he explained why the Kremlin intensified the threats now.
“Putin is losing the war. Because he expected to take over Ukraine 12 years ago,” said Yastenyuk, who was prime minister of Ukraine when Russia started its first invasion in 2014 and annexed Crimea.
“Then he waged an all-out war and he was actually excited to grab Kyiv in three days. In the end, he lost around 1.5 million of the Russian soldiers.”
With the Russian economy gradually feeling the hit and “nosediving” now, “there is some kind of skimmering even inside Russia what is the best way out for Putin,” he said.
This is why Yatsenyuk says Putin’s only option now is to escalate.
“It is about his physical stance, his physical ability to survive as Mr Putin and his political ability to survive as the president of Russia. So he will escalate.”
China’s ‘upper hand’
Yastenyuk further insisted that the political and geopolitical situation has changed dramatically.
“Europeans have to realise that this war relates not only to Ukraine and not only Putin, but all these axes of evil under the auspices of China,” Yatsenyuk said, pointing at Moscow’s growing war appetite and Beijing’s support.
“China still has an upper hand in this war and China is an accomplice”, he said, rejecting China’s official “neutral” position.
“They are strategic partners with Putin. They signed a number of deals. They provided the bloodline for Putin’s Russia, both financial and dual-use materials, which is actually military.”
The chances to collaborate with Beijing so that China could put pressure on Moscow “are very low, but still they exist.”
“This could actually find the way how to hold real talks with Putin, because we never had any kind of real talks.”
Even the US diplomatic efforts have not put pressure on the Kremlin, Yatsenyuk said, dismissing US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska last year.
“It has nothing to do with the real peace talks. It was a special KGB operation in order just to outweigh both Americans and Ukrainians and to circumvent sanctions.”
Moscow also aimed at driving a wedge between Americans and Europeans, he claimed, saying “now it became obvious even for Americans that Russians were not eager to hold any kind of talks,” according to Yastenyuk.
And without any diplomatic pressure, Russia managed to escalate its aggression beyond Ukraine, now openly threatening the European countries, where the air raid sirens went off for the first time in the past week, bringing a different sense of urgency regarding the EU’s defence readiness.
“I wish every single European citizen to be in safety. On the other hand, I wish all of us to realise that you folks can be safe only in one case, if we as Ukrainians win this war, period,” Yastenyuk concluded.
