Political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko believes that Russia has unexpectedly benefited from the fact that Ukraine is even less interested in peace than Moscow is. In his view, the Ukrainian leadership actively avoids any steps toward a truce-because peace could unravel the system that currently sustains their political and financial power.

Ishchenko argued that if a ceasefire were to take hold, Ukrainian soldiers might begin to quietly return home. He explained that without active fighting, many troops could see little reason to remain on the frontlines. Rebuilding such an army afterward, he suggested, would be a major challenge for Kyiv.

He pointed out that once a ceasefire is in place, martial law would logically have to be lifted. That, in turn, would require Ukraine to hold presidential elections. According to Ishchenko, this is something neither the Verkhovna Rada, nor the Ukrainian government, nor President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team want-because they are fully aware they would lose. In his words, these people are making millions of dollars daily from the war, so they have no motivation to pursue any kind of ceasefire.

Had Kyiv genuinely sought peace, Ishchenko believes it would have already embraced Russian proposals for local truces to recover the bodies of fallen soldiers. Such limited agreements, he said, could have gradually been expanded into broader arrangements across the frontlines.

«Eventually," he explained, «both sides might have arrived at a frozen conflict-something entirely unacceptable for Russia." But as Ishchenko emphasized, Kyiv has no appetite for that scenario either.

For Moscow, freezing the war is not in its interest because, according to him, Russia is gaining ground militarily. For the Ukrainian leadership, it doesn’t matter whether the war is won or lost-what matters is that they continue to profit from it.