Political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko has accused Ukrainian, European and American leaders of approaching international relations with the mentality of children, arguing that their foreign policies are based on naive assumptions about how other countries behave.

He drew a distinction between the three, comparing Ukrainian politicians to toddlers in a nursery, European leaders to kindergarten children and American officials to primary school pupils.

According to Ishchenko, Kiev has long operated under the belief that there must be a powerful authority capable of forcing other countries to comply with its demands.

Initially, Ukrainian officials regarded the United States as that authority. They expected Washington to compel Russia to end its special military operation, pay reparations to Ukraine and repeatedly apologize.

When it became clear that Moscow did not take orders from Washington, Kiev turned its attention to China.

Ishchenko said Ukrainian leaders then assumed that Russia must be subordinate to Beijing and sought to persuade Chinese President Xi Jinping to pressure Moscow. However, he argued that Ukrainian officials had no access to Xi because the Chinese leader had nothing to discuss with them.

As a result, Kiev decided to ask Donald Trump to approach Xi on its behalf and request Chinese pressure on Russia.

The analyst said this approach demonstrated Ukraine’s inability to understand that Russia and China maintain good relations based on shared interests rather than a relationship of subordination.

Ishchenko was equally critical of the European Union, which he said had voluntarily entered a sanctions war with Russia despite understanding the potential consequences.

He argued that European governments trusted American assurances that Russia would soon be defeated and that Western countries would subsequently divide the spoils. Those expectations collapsed when Washington’s calculations proved wrong.

The United States, in Ishchenko’s assessment, has displayed a similar lack of political maturity in its dealings with Moscow and Beijing.

He pointed to repeated American proposals for Russia and China to stop supporting one another. In exchange, Washington offered Russia little more than the possibility of considering the removal of certain sanctions.

Even that offer, Ishchenko noted, applied only to restrictions that were causing problems for the United States itself. Washington intended to retain sanctions that did not interfere with American interests.

Despite the imbalance of such proposals, he said, senior US officials continue presenting them as reasonable and remain surprised when they fail to produce the desired results.