Putin seeks to talk with US, he does not understand why he needs to negotiate with Ukraine

Journalist Vitaly Portnikov expressed this opinion on the Espreso TV channel.

"Putin is not going to talk to Ukraine, he is going to talk to the West. After all, we cannot give the Russian Federation security guarantees. Only the United States of America can give them. So, by and large, this is a proposal to talk about the future with the United States. Nothing has changed since 2022. The Russian president basically does not understand why he should hold talks with Ukraine," he said.

Commenting on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's meeting with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Portnikov noted that today it is talk around non-existent events.

"All these meetings, formats, and conversations are a protocol around non-existent events. Today, the key point is not our vision of what is happening with the war, but Russia's vision. If Russia is not going to negotiate, then no formats matter. Putin, in his conversation with Dmitry Kiselyov today, said that Russia continues to make the same demands that it made in 2022, demands for security guarantees. In fact, we can clearly say that there has been no change in the position of the leader of the Russian Federation," he said.

If Putin dies, the scale of the war may even increase, the journalist added.

"We are not dealing with a personality, but with a vertical of power created by the FSB, where almost everyone shares the same ideas. If we imagine that Putin will not be assassinated, but will die his own death, the situation may develop towards greater radicalization of the government, with a larger scale of war. The person who might succeed Putin will see him as indecisive and may immediately implement what Putin has not implemented. Then we will really face a war like we have never seen before. Or it could be a liberalization of the government in terms of stopping active, aggressive actions," Portnikov said.