One way to victory is to stretch Putin and his army so thinly that he is forced to give up, the source said, adding that no matter what the president’s threshold for pain was, he was unable to sustain the war indefinitely.
“2024 isn’t about big operational success — there’s unlikely to be a big breakthrough this year. 2024 is about stretching Putin into 2025 and beyond — effectively calling his bluff and testing his resolve,” the source said.
Mykhailo Chaplyha, a political commentator and former vice-ombudsman of Ukraine, said he believed most people in Ukraine wanted a truce but were “afraid to admit it to themselves”. He said there was an atmosphere of “total mistrust and fear” in Ukraine and that anyone who dared to think of a truce would immediately become an “outcast and a traitor”. One Ukrainian former official said that President Zelensky was losing support in Ukraine and that although the West was saying Ukraine should not give up, there was no war strategy and men and women were being “sent to the front line to die”.
“It is nonsense to send in our soldiers to die if we don’t have enough armament and resources to win militarily. What is the strategy, to keep us dying for what? And not less important — where is our diplomacy?” he said.
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