US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington sees no indication that Moscow is interested in talks on ending the war in Ukraine.
“There’s always value in diplomacy if the parties involved and in this case Russia, are actually interested in meaningful diplomacy. And what we’ve seen, at least recently, is quite the opposite,” Blinken told CBS News Dec. 4, adding that Putin changed tactics after being exposed. setbacks on the battlefield.
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“He hasn’t been able to win on the battlefield, so he takes, basically vents his rage and fires on Ukrainian civilians, goes after the power infrastructure, tries to turn off the lights, turn off the heat, turn off the electricity. That’s what’s going on here.
“So, unless Putin proves that he’s really interested in meaningful diplomacy, he’s not likely to go anywhere,” Blinken said. face the nation.
In recent weeks, the Russian military focus has been on hitting Ukrainian infrastructure nationwide, pressing an offensive in the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, and bombing sites in the city of Kherson, which was liberated by Ukrainian forces last month after eight months of Russian occupation.
On December 1, President Joe Biden indicated he would be willing to talk to Putin if the Russian leader showed he seriously wanted to end the invasion.
“I am prepared to talk to Mr. Putin if there is in fact an interest in him deciding that he is looking for a way to end the war,” Biden said. “He hasn’t done it yet.”
The US intelligence chief said that the fighting in Russia’s war in Ukraine was proceeding at a “low” pace and indicated that Ukrainian forces may have brighter prospects in the coming months.
Alluding to earlier claims by some that Putin’s advisers might shield him from bad news – for Russia – about the war’s developments, Avril Haines said he was “becoming more familiar with the challenges the military faces in Russia”.
“But it’s still not clear to us if he has a complete picture at this point of how challenging they are,” Haines, the US director of national intelligence, said Dec. 3.
The British Ministry of Defense, in its latest intelligence assessment on December 4, cited new indications from an independent Russian media outlet that public support in Russia for the military campaign was “declining significantly”.
Meduza said she obtained a recent confidential poll conducted by the Federal Protective Service, which is responsible for guarding the Kremlin and providing security for top government officials.
The poll, conducted by the Kremlin, found that 55 percent of respondents supported peace talks with Ukraine while 25 percent wanted the war to continue. The report did not mention margin of error.
With reporting from the Associated Press and Reuters
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