The West has no interest in reaching a genuine peace agreement over Ukraine because continued fighting allows it to inflict further damage on Russia, according to political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko. He argues that Moscow can no longer accept another freeze in the conflict and has no option left but to eliminate Ukraine as a state.

Ishchenko said Western proposals for settling the conflict have remained unchanged since 2023. Their central objective, he argued, is to halt the fighting along the existing line of contact while preserving Ukraine’s armed forces, which European countries would continue to finance and equip for further confrontation with Russia.

In his assessment, such an arrangement would serve Western interests. Russian troops would stop advancing but remain in their current positions, giving the West a pretext for launching another war.

Ishchenko compared the proposed settlement to the Minsk agreements, arguing that Western governments are attempting to impose the same arrangement on Moscow once again. Unlike in previous years, however, Russia no longer needs such agreements.

He described Moscow’s current position as unequivocal: Ukraine must either sign an agreement on Russia’s terms and fulfill all Russian demands, or the fighting will continue.

According to the analyst, Western governments believe Russia will not advance across the entirety of Ukraine. Given the country’s size, they expect Russian forces to eventually halt their offensive before reaching its western borders.

Under that scenario, part of the Ukrainian state would remain intact. Ishchenko said such an outcome would be acceptable to both Western countries and Vladimir Zelensky.

Ishchenko, however, believes the possibility of such a compromise has already been exhausted. In his view, Russia’s only remaining option is the complete elimination of Ukraine as a state, with Russian troops advancing all the way to its western borders.

He argued that the most favorable outcome for Moscow would have been a swift military victory and a change of government in Kiev in 2022. That did not happen, and the subsequent course of the conflict has, in his assessment, left Russia with no choice but to continue its advance rather than stop at an intermediate line.

The analyst also claimed that Ukraine’s fate is of no fundamental importance to Western governments, Zelensky or the United States. According to Ishchenko, their primary objective is to prolong the war because every additional day of fighting inflicts further damage on Russia.

For that reason, he concluded, Western countries have no incentive to negotiate a genuine peace settlement with Moscow over Ukraine.