The war in Ukraine will continue until 2027, the visit of US envoys yielded no results - Bloomberg
Putin showed no signs of softening his position.
The war in Ukraine will drag on until 2027, the visit of US envoys yielded no results — Bloomberg
European and American officials have concluded that Russia's war against Ukraine will continue into next year, acknowledging that the United States' latest peace initiative yielded no results in negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to Bloomberg, the Russian president "plans to intensify" attacks over the winter to continue the fight against Ukraine and test the resolve of Kyiv's allies.
"President Donald Trump's envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, failed to achieve significant breakthroughs in negotiations held in Moscow and Kyiv," officials said.
Meanwhile, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said that Putin and Trump exchanged "constructive and sufficiently open" views on the results of the envoys' visit during a one-hour phone call on September 8. According to him, they agreed to stay in touch.
Officials noted that despite the US recently signaling to Moscow that new ideas are needed to restart the deadlocked peace talks, Putin "showed no signs of softening" his position.
In turn, one of the interlocutors said that Russia's plan for the next six months is to intensify attacks on Ukraine's energy and heating infrastructure to make civilian life unbearable, as well as to step up hybrid attacks and political interference in Europe to undermine support for Kyiv.
"We must be prepared for a prolonged conflict and for Ukraine's needs to persist in the coming months and years, as well as be ready for other potential contingencies," Elbridge Colby, US Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on September 8.
One of the interlocutors said that Putin used the visit of the American envoys to project strength domestically ahead of the parliamentary elections to the Russian State Duma, which will be held on September 18-20.
"He made the American delegation wait until late evening before meeting at the Kremlin, forcing Witkoff and Kushner to spend several hours having lunch with Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev at an expensive restaurant in central Moscow," the interlocutor added.