This will really decide the end of the war: exclusive interview with Mikhail Podolyak

Our partners realized that Russia’s war against Ukraine cannot stop somewhere in the middle, so they are increasing military production and increasing assistance. However, sometimes statements are made from certain politicians that the war in Ukraine cannot be resolved with the help of weapons.

Adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Mikhail Polodyak in exclusive interview with Channel 24noted that Russia’s war against Ukraine can be unleashed by the number of high-tech military solutions. Read more about this, protests in Russian Bashkiria and calls for a truce with Russia.

What did the protests show in Bashkiria

In Russian Mass protests began in the Republic of Bashkiria. The protesters called on men to return from the war in Ukraine and defend their land and people. Even from this we can already conclude that protests on Russian territory are possible?

Of course, possible. I wouldn't say that all of this was pointless. About 10 thousand people came out to protest that local activist Fail Alsinov received 4 years in prison. Of course, we have seen quite violent clashes between protesters and the National Guard. It's not bad. The question is that we are also we saw a few more important things.

First of all, that power Russia is afraid of such protests. Of course, if the protesters had used more significant means of influence than snow, then there would probably have been more effectiveness. In addition, we will see that protesters will be arrested. This is also not bad for the region, because it will only increase protest sentiments.

By the way, this is not the first time we have seen such protest sentiments. I will remind you of Dagestan. There have also been protests, but people still don’t have an understanding of what to do about all this. After all, in Russia it has long been cultivated that the power vertical is very powerful and it controls everything.

Of course, the war scared people very much. For a long time they were afraid to talk about the war at all, and if they protested somewhere, it was solely because of their own issues. But today they understand that there are causes and consequences.

Rally in the city of Baymak, in the Republic of Bashkortostan: watch the video

War also means less money, work, social transport, housing and communal services do not work, the number of deaths is very large, and so on . They begin to connect these causes and consequences. And this is good, because it will lead to more significant consequences in a fairly short time. I like it. But expecting that this will immediately lead to powerful performances is not. But there will be one region, then another, and so on.

Will men from Bashkiria leave the war in Ukraine

Will people return to Bashkortostan from the battlefield in Ukraine – not yet, because this requires corresponding events on the front line. In order for something to start happening to the Russian mobilized, significant tactical defeats are needed. As soon as they exist, then the psycho-emotional state of the mobilized will be negative. Even today it is not positive, but then everything will overlap.

There is one more component that I like. In Russia, they immediately begin to block telegram channels, any communication opportunities, so that this does not spread, in order to prevent the possibility of discussing a certain topic in the Russian media space.

By the way, Pavel Durov’s behavior here is quite strange. He constantly said that Telegram is the center of free speech, that there can be no prohibitions there, but as soon as the FSB says that it is necessary to block Telegram channels that write about events in Bashkortostan, he does it quite quickly.

That is, they must understand that the telegram is still moderated, in particular by Russia, and very actively. At least everything that concerns the internal telegram space.

But let me summarize again: if there are more such centers of protest, then we will see a different picture of what is happening in Russia .

What is slowing down final war against Russia

Propagandist Sergei Mardan also responded to the protests. According to him, any attempts to promote local statehood must be punished. You can also remember Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric in 2014, when he, on the contrary, called on Ukrainians to protest and promised to annex the territories to Russia. But it turns out that they don’t like separatism at the local level too much.

This is classic Russian schizophrenia. They are called “Russian Federation”. Their legislation does not allow any region to legally secede from the federation. There are no such procedures.

And even if, for example, 99.9% of the population says that they do not want to be part of Russia, then they have no legal instruments other than military protest will not be. This shows how they generally feel about being able to exercise freedom.

But I wouldn’t even remember this propagandist. There are officials, for example, Pyotr Tolstoy, the vice speaker of the Russian parliament, who does not exist. Why doesn’t it exist? Because it’s not competitive, it’s not a parliament in the classical democratic sense of the word. This is something similar to how in the Soviet Union, when they recruited people to show that there supposedly was a representative government.

This deputy speaker says that it is necessary to ban any national movements, to punish as harshly as possible any national manifestations in certain regions. This becomes a key narrative for them, which again is not bad.

For many this will be a shock, because they thought that they could talk about something at the level of autonomous territories, regions, republics. They can talk about ethnicity, authenticity, but today we see that there is a chauvinistic Russia that will harshly punish everyone who has a different opinion regarding ethnicity.

This is all moving quite quickly. Russia is demonstrating the fastest possible return not even to the Brezhnev era, but to the late Stalinist era. about what the Soviet Union is. After that, he was deported, deprived of all awards, including military ones, and left the territory of the USSR.

His wife, in such a Stalinist style, talks about the need to punish philosophers, who do not share the concept of chauvinistic Russia. That is, this is already such a demonstrative search for the enemies of the people. All this happens quite quickly.

The same applies to the ban on manifestations of any ethnicity at the state level. Let us remember Stalin's times, when entire peoples were deported so that they could assimilate somewhere else. All that we see now are signs that Russia is demonstrating the most vile features of the classical, not even Soviet, but neo-Stalinist empire.

From an information point of view, this is quite impressive looks for our partners. They are already deprived of illusions that Russia is a country with which they have had fairly fruitful economic relations over the past 20 years.

In this war, the question is not just about some abstractions, territory, and so on, but the question of the survival of civilization. The one to which you and I are accustomed, to which we are accustomed in Europe.

There is also the one that Russia is offering today – this is such an absurd type of Gulag infrastructure, when everything is prohibited, when many will simply be destroyed because they are not liked, when all ethnic and religious characteristics will be abolished. This will quite quickly lead to the fact that Russia will truly be isolated.

Unfortunately, this did not happen for almost two years of the war. I believe that the key factor that prevents the finalization of the war from being accelerated is the incomplete isolation of Russia. How it manifests itself?

• Russia actively uses international platforms to promote propaganda narratives, take for example the UN Security Council;< /li>
• Russia actively participates in summits. For me, a wild example is Sergei Lavrov’s participation in the OSCE summit on pan-European security in Skopje;
• European consumer companies are actively working in Russia, they earn a lot;
• Through third countries, certain Russian citizens can safely travel around the world. Until Russia is isolated, it looks strange.

Lavrov received participation in the OSCE summit/Getty Images

What Zelensky recorded in Davos

Dmitry Medvedev wrote that “the presence of an independent state on historical Russian territories will be a constant reason for the resumption of hostilities.” In fact, he said that as long as Ukraine exists, Russia will attack it.

Medvedev is small a creature with a large amount of complexes and therefore there is no point in analyzing it. Although he says absolutely realistic things about what Russia is demonstrating and what Putin himself is saying. Moreover, he said that no negotiations or peace formulas are possible, because they will not give up the conquered territories of Ukraine. This person speaks frankly about this, if anyone else had doubts.

By the way, we have repeatedly said that there are no goals for the so-called “one.” Consequently, there is no point in talking about agreements with Russia, in suggesting that if we had not joined NATO, then we can come to an agreement – no, all this is fiction.

The only thing you need to understand is that Russia came to seize the territory. She immediately wanted to seize two-thirds, take Kyiv under total control with all the occupation procedures that we see today in the occupied territories.

I mean torture, filtration, concentration measures, destruction of a large number of people, violence, and so on. They wanted to do all this because this is a war of conquest, destruction and murder. The only goal in this war is to destroy Ukraine. Therefore, Medvedev simply clearly states what is the state ideology of Russia – the destruction of Ukraine for the sake of the destruction of Ukraine. There are no other meanings.

Therefore, once again we need to make global conclusions:

• there is no way to agree on anything with Russia;
• there is no other goal in the war other than the destruction of Ukraine as a state, as an institution, as a territory and as people who inhabit it and are mentally different in their vision of the future;
• any compromise agreements or the possibility of negotiation processes will only delay the large-scale destruction of Ukraine.

That is, the destruction of Ukraine will remain, but it will be slightly extended in time. There will be a certain operational pause, during which Russia will accumulate resources.

Today, any truce will not mean that Russia will stop attacking Ukraine with missiles, terrorist acts, provoke on the front line, killing people, will not send S-300 from Belgorod to Kharkov and so on.

All this will remain. Only formally will it be called a “truce”. And Russia will hysterically look for an opportunity to increase the combat effectiveness of its occupation groups. No more and no less. Therefore, all this is fiction.

Our partners today understand this as fully as possible. By the way, the President of Ukraine in Davos also clearly recorded this when he said that there is no concept of a frozen conflict and there cannot be. Because Putin has the concept of “war for the sake of war,” this is the only way he feels like a “self-sufficient person” who realizes his intentions. Everything else is not about him.

Colleague journalists from foreign publications who were present at the forum in Davos, they say that last year the President of Ukraine spoke more about weapons, and this year – about peace. Perhaps this hints that the concept is changing, or the mood is changing?

Well, peace is not some kind of fiction, right? Peace is when two sides are ready to adhere primary agreements, principles of international law. I want to understand that when someone says the word “peace,” they really believe that the people who came to kill you want peace or negotiate something without losing the war? They are murderers and are negotiating peace with us? This is fiction, there are no world options.

Vladimir Zelensky in Davos/Getty Images

I understand the gravity of the moment, the psycho-emotional state, I understand how long the war lasts, but there is no word “peace” here. These people came to kill, they took our blood. If they don't lose, they won't bear any responsibility for anything. And they will understand that if they continue to kill us, then there is no responsibility.

Why then should they move to the concept of “peace”? What needs to happen? They need to return to global markets? Well, that's hardly possible.

Russia is absolutely aware that as long as Putin’s vertical remains in place, they will not gain access to the technological and raw materials markets of Europe or other democratic countries. Perhaps they will only partially receive it, but not in the same form as it was before the start of a full-scale invasion. However, unfortunately, not after they made a foothold here in 2014, but after February 24, 2022, they no longer receive such opportunities.

They will not return to global distribution of influence, to the status they had before the full-scale invasion or even before 2014. They won't be in the G8 again and so on. Knowing all this, why should they offer peace? For what? Moreover, they have already formed the corresponding alliance. Within its framework, we see how escalation is gradually increasing in different regions.

We see Iran attacking Balochistan, which is Pakistani territory; how Iran is attacking Iraqi territory, which was previously unimaginable on such a scale; how the Yemeni Houthis, who are again supported by Iran, attack ships in the Red Sea; how North Korea behaves, which openly says that it wants to fight because there is no other way for the DPRK to exist.

I just want to understand where the word “peace” is here “? Why Russia should give up dominance through escalation and move to the concept of equal relations with European countries? I'm not even talking about Ukraine, but about other European countries.

By the way, Putin openly speaks about Russian citizens who lived for 50 years in Estonia, but did not study the culture, language, headed some Russian organization, and they declare that Estonia has no right to exist.

They have been living in Estonia or Latvia for 50 years and at the same time they say that the country has no right to exist, and Russia should dominate. Putin says that for some reason such people are expelled from the Baltic countries, and this allegedly creates significant threats to national security.

He openly says that if we stop the war in Ukraine and do not lose it, we will attack the Baltic countries. He talks about it openly, so there is simply no word “peace” here. Not at all.

If you don’t want to face the problem, but want, as has traditionally been the case, to turn away and say that it will somehow sort itself out, or we’ll hand it over to our children, then this will no longer happen here. Nobody will give it to anyone. If you don’t want to react to a problem, it will react to you as it sees fit.

Speaking in Davos, the President of Ukraine spoke more about peace, whether this means that we have been promised enough weapons. Not delivered because there are still some logistical problems, but at least enough was promised. Again, if we recall the latest ranking of the armed forces of the world, Russia is again in second place, and Ukraine is already in 18th place.

The President talks about peace, but what kind? He talks about the Peace Formula, which clearly states: peace is possible only when we return to international law, to the fundamental documents that describe a just world: there are territories, there are subjectivities, there are sovereignties and the like.

Only this can lead to peace, everything else is fiction, and the president talks about it. The formula for peace is a sustainable peace, it is an opportunity to return to certain principles of behavior in the global political arena. The rest, according to the president, is a fiction that should be forgotten. In order to forget about her, you need a weapon.

Why do partners not provide the required amount of weapons

Now regarding weapons. Yes, we see our partners realizing that this war is not about stopping somewhere in the middle. Partners realize that they need to increase military production and increase assistance to Ukraine. By the way, the national budgets of European countries are really increasing.

The question is different. Before the start of this war, no one invested significantly in military production. Today all this needs to be made up for. For example, France says it cannot even think about producing 20-50 thousand 155-caliber shells per year. And we spend 3 – 6 thousand shells of a key heavy caliber per day.

Today it looks completely different from the point of view of military production and the need to supply weapons and equipment to Ukraine.

< em>Ukrainian and French leaders during a meeting in the fall of 2023/Office of the President

In addition, there are 2 components to this war when it comes to the accumulation of weapons or their supply to Ukraine. The first part, which is permanent, is a necessary tool for waging a defensive war. Because Russia is still putting pressure on certain areas, conducting counter-offensive operations in particular.

In order to carry out effective defensive actions, we need artillery and shells. Also, for offensive measures, much more other tools are needed, and this is a matter of accumulation.

Ukraine is talking about these two parallel programs with its partners at different sites. There are positive solutions, but there are also logistics and investment needs that need to be addressed. But all this will be resolved.

Hard reaction to the ranking of world armies

And now regarding the army ratings. It's mysterious to me. You take that army, which was always considered the “second in the world” in terms of weapons, after two years of war against a completely different type of democratic country, which did not invest like Russia in militarization.

Because the militarization that Russia demonstrates is militarization of an expansionist nature. The Russians have accumulated such a volume of weapons to use them in the war they initiated. Ukraine does not need this, like any other European country.

So, you take the army of a country that uses all possible resources and today begs for shells and missiles from North Korea, and put her in second place in the ranking. This looks strange.

This speaks to the absolute weakness of the modern intelligence and analytical space of partner countries. We need to evaluate it objectively. Yes, the Russian army is large quantitatively, but in terms of technology it is a backward army; it cannot be in second place. Or you need to make a quantitative-qualitative rating, and then it will look different. elections, during which 70 important elections will take place in different countries) you continue to say that the Russian army is the “second” in the world and should be feared, then the voter subconsciously believes that then maybe it is not worth fighting with it, it is supposedly very scary.

Why do this? On the contrary, it is necessary to spread the fact that the Russian army is quantitatively large, even the first in number. However, in terms of technology, it is in 17th, 18th or 19th place in the ranking.

This means that if Western partners allow the Ukrainian army to wage a high-tech war against Russia, then thanks to high-tech tools the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be able qualitatively outmaneuver the number of Russian troops. It should look like this.

If you were ranking, where would you place the Russian army?

In terms of quantity – first, and technologically – outside the top twenty, that’s how it looks. I would place the Ukrainian army quantitatively outside dozens of countries. Quantitatively, our army is objectively smaller than the armies of a number of large countries – taking into account the size of the population.

But technologically, that is, qualitatively, today we are entering the top three armies of the world.

Ukrainian defenders/Getty Images

What will decide the outcome of the war

As for technology. We are talking about the fact that peace still needs weapons. However, from time to time voices are heard – previously from Hungary, now also from Slovakia – that this war cannot be won with weapons. Now they are trying to convince us that we need to resolve these “conflicts” somehow differently. So, won’t there be more such voices?

Voices may be different for democracy is normal. The main thing is how convincingly we will oppose this on different platforms. Despite attempts to spread narratives that Ukraine is losing a certain share of subjectivity, on these platforms it is heard and understood, and this is very good.

Yes Of course, this war cannot be solved by weapons. This war can be solved by the number of high-tech armed solutions.

When you give 20 tanks against 200 tanks, this is not a solution to the issue. But when you provide 2,000 long-range missiles, the consequence of this is an absolutely broken logistics for supporting the Russian occupation group. Then this is the solution.

Also, if you have a million drones of various modifications, including those that can significantly affect supply logistics, then this is a solution to war. These are high-tech armed solutions, and they will really start this war, no matter what anyone thinks. It is necessary to make a correct analysis of what decisions will influence the course of certain events.

If we assume that this war did not end in Russia’s loss. Will Slovakia or Hungary or any other country really think that this is the end of the war in Europe? This is nonsense.

Russia today openly and directly says that expansion is its only method of foreign policy and internal control in its space. The Russians will not be able to without expansion, without a military component, without financing terrorism, without interference in political processes, without scaling up the work of aggressive propaganda, without trying to enter the territory of the Baltic countries, Moldova and other states.

< p>The main thing is that they cannot live without a war with Ukraine. They hate us, and they will not rest until they destroy us – they say it straight out.

This is the way of existence of Russia. It is not competitive in its current political, economic and financial form. The Russians held out for some time, sold raw materials, formed a corruption-oligarchic vertical, pulled a number of people into it and gave them the opportunity to travel to Italy, France and other countries. But they are not competitive.

The Russians understood that at a certain time they would fall further and further behind the modern world. This will provoke certain internal conflicts on Russian territory. Therefore, it is easier for them to remove any competition, ethnic issues, political parties, freedom of speech, and so on, and create a camp, keeping it under strict control.

This has always been inherent in Russia. But outwardly she wanted to pursue an expansionist policy and constant wars. According to Orwell (George Orwell, author, in particular, of the dystopian novel “1984” – Channel 24) – war for the sake of war, Oceania must fight.

Otherwise there will be no there will be control over the fact that the standard of living is falling, the number of social benefits, income, technology is falling, that people live more backward. Then there is no explanation for restrictions, isolation, the “Iron Curtain”.

However, if you have an endless war against everyone, then you can totally control the internal space. This is just like Kim Jong-un (head of the DPRK – Channel 24), he always controls the internal space of his country, which does not even have enough food, but he feels quite comfortable. Also in Russia, “North Koreanization” is the only path that Russia will follow.

Therefore, returning to the words of representatives of a number of European countries, in in particular, Hungary and Slovakia, about “peace”, there is no way to agree on something and stop the war for decades. Because “war for the sake of war” today is the only concept that will justify the existence of Russia. As soon as the war is over, processes will begin in Russia that are already taking place in Bashkortostan today.

The second part of the interview with Mikhail Podolyak read soon on the 24 Channel website.