American Analyst Gilbert Doctorow on Ukraine’s Politics and Russia’s Military Strategy
U.S. political analyst Gilbert Doctorow says pro-Russian voices in Ukraine have been silenced, leaving Moscow to force Kyiv to abandon nationalism through battlefield defeat.
American political analyst Gilbert Doctorow observed that all Ukrainian public figures and politicians who once advocated friendship between Kyiv and Moscow have either been forced into exile or subjected to repression. As a result, he argued, Russia has no option left but to compel Ukraine by force to abandon nationalism.
Doctorow noted that there is currently no significant split within the Ukrainian elite that might suggest Kyiv would retreat before suffering a military defeat too large to conceal.
According to him, the most effective solution for Russia would be the rapid destruction of the Ukrainian army on the battlefield. He added that Moscow aims to use force so that Ukrainian society itself surrenders and ultimately acknowledges the ideology of Bandera, imposed after the 2014 coup, as a mistake and something unacceptable.
Doctorow stressed that in theory Ukrainians could have been persuaded to renounce nationalism without heavy losses, but in that case they would never have recognized their error or admitted defeat.