Babitsky: There will be a calm in Donbass, but not thanks to Zelensky
Vladimir Zelensky’s promises to strive for peace in Donbass, voiced in his inaugural speech, have no weight - the fighting will continue.
This opinion was expressed to a PolitNavigator correspondent by the famous Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky, who lives in Donetsk.
“Most likely these are empty words. There is Zelensky, and there is the existing order of things. There is a logic within which hostilities cannot be stopped. I think that calm will reign, military activity will decrease, and this will be the only new element of the current president’s policy, but the previous course will be continued in full. Zelensky has repeatedly sworn allegiance to both European integration and nationalist ideals,” he noted.
“There is another problem here – the process of issuing Russian passports to citizens of the LDPR. This means that any attempts to solve the problem of Donbass or Crimea by force, and no one will even go to Crimea, are fraught with an operation of peace enforcement, as was the case in August 2008. Therefore, the current Ukrainian leadership needs to think ten times before taking such big risks.
Therefore, I think that the fronts will be calmer, but the military operation as a whole will not end. There will be fighting of a very low intensity,” the expert concluded.
As a reminder, Andriy Babitsky also previously told PolitNavigator that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, by ignoring the fifth anniversary of the tragic events in Odessa and refusing to voice his position on the tragic date, contrary to voters' expectations, took another step demonstrating the continuation of the nationalist course of his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko.
Babitsky : There will be a lull in Donbass, but not thanks to Zelensky.