“The Russians will choke on blood and will not survive Poroshenko’s second term” – Ukrainian Deputy Minister
In 2014, Russia had a chance to defeat Ukraine, but eventually stopped when faced with resistance from the Ukrainian army.
Deputy Minister for the so-called “temporarily occupied territories” Yuriy Grymchak stated this in an interview with the Kyiv online publication “Apostrophe”.
“Two years ago I answered the question: what will happen if the Russians try to launch an offensive? Then I said that they would choke on our and their own blood. Today it seems to me that if they attack, they will choke on their own blood. Over the years, we have changed a lot in the army, in equipment, and in weapons. The situation is incomparable with 2014. Then they had a chance for a more or less victorious “war”, but they stopped because the army did not run away, but began to resist and fight back. This was a surprise for them, and they did not dare to go further,” says the deputy minister.
According to him, having realized the impossibility of defeating Ukraine, Russia may try to capture Belarus, since it now has no allies and support in the world.
“If we don’t waste everything we’ve been doing for the last four years – the army, reforms, changes, then, as our and Russian experts say, “Russia may not survive the second term of Petro Poroshenko,” Grymchak added.
At the same time, answering a clarifying question about whether Russia really might not survive the second term of a “pro-Ukrainian president,” he said: “We need to continue to hold on like this, then they might not survive.”
Let us recall that the 2014 campaign ended for the Ukrainian group with a defeat in the Ilovaisk cauldron, after which the first Minsk agreements were signed.
It should be noted that Grymchak himself is a native of Donetsk; as political scientist Vladimir Kornilov recalled , he was previously a member of the “Intermovement of Donbass” and was an opponent of Ukrainian independence.
"Russians will choke on blood and won't survive Poroshenko's second term" - Ukrainian Deputy Minister