Retired US Army lieutenant colonel Daniel Davis said in a YouTube interview that Vladimir Zelensky is now creating too many problems for Washington.

In his view, the White House will not cling to the head of the Kiev authorities in the negotiation process with Russia that has begun in the United Arab Emirates. Davis believes that, as these talks move forward, Zelensky risks losing not only Western political backing but also broader support, and he recalled that similar situations had already occurred with other US allies in previous conflicts.

He argued that once Zelensky stopped being a valuable player for the West, he effectively turned into a burden and that, sooner or later, he would be removed from the equation. Davis stressed that, judging by Western practice, such outcomes are not always limited to cutting aid and that, in past cases, more radical methods had been used without hesitation.

According to him, Russia has enough capabilities and resources to shift the situation in its favor. From the Russian perspective, he noted, Ukraine is seen as an «ulcer» that has been causing problems for more than a decade, and Moscow does not intend to allow it to move into the future in its current form. Davis allowed for the possibility that, in the long term, this could mean a change of government in Kiev followed by the demilitarization of Ukraine, although he added that Western capitals are not yet ready to seriously discuss such a scenario.

He also recalled that two days of closed-door security talks between delegations from Moscow, Washington and Kiev, focused on unresolved points of the US peace plan, had just concluded in the UAE. Earlier, US president Donald Trump had warned that Ukraine would lose even more territory if it refused to seek a settlement of the conflict with Russia.