As Ukraine seizes ‘first chance to win’, war horrors come home to Russia
President Putin has hinted at peace talks as the economy fails, people flee cities and toxic ‘oil rains’ fall. Kyiv, Ukraine – For centuries, the
President Putin has hinted at peace talks as the economy fails, people flee cities and toxic ‘oil rains’ fall. Kyiv, Ukraine – For centuries, the Russian phrase “behind the Urals Mountains” meant “safe from a foreign invasion”. During the Napoleonic incursion of 1812 or the Nazi German assault in 1941, anywhere behind the mountain range that divides Russia’s European part from Siberia seemed far enough for the evacuation of civilians and military factories. Not anymore. In late April, a swarm of Ukrainian drones attacked Yekaterinburg, the Urals region’s administrative capital that sits more than 1,800km (1,118 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Ukraine hoped the drones would hit a plant where elements for air defence systems are manufactured, and since the first attack, the Yekaterinburg airport has been shut down at least five times. Russian locals are panicking about dwindling food supplies, a nosediving economy and dire shortages of petrol after months of Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries and fuel storage sites. “Prices are growing, shops are closing down, there are lines at gas stations, and they don’t pour the gas in canisters” to avoid reselling it at higher prices, Anatoly, a 45-year-old who owns a small business in Yekaterinburg, told Al Jazeera. He added that people are expecting a disaster and “everyone is trying to stash food”. He withheld his surname because of his anti-war stance. “My circle (of friends) has always been negative about the war,” he said. “What flies in is unpleasant but deserved.” ‘Russia is ready for peace talks’: Putin Russia’s summer offensive, designed to occupy the Kyiv-controlled part of the southeastern Donbas region and bite off more areas in northern and southern Ukraine, has failed.
Instead, Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to renew peace talks that stalled because of US-Israeli strikes on Iran. “Russia is ready for peace talks with Ukraine on the basis of the Istanbul agreements” that were worked out in 2022, Putin said on Tuesday. Kyiv is most likely to reject most of Russia’s demands as unrealistic, and observers say that Putin simply wants to buy time. “This is (Putin’s) wish to bide his time looking for a way out of a difficult situation,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a Moscow-born researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera. “For the first time since the autumn of 2022 Ukraine has a chance to win the war,” he said referring to a daring operation by Kyiv’s outmanned troops to kick a larger Russian army out of northern Ukraine. A pro-Kremlin analyst summarised Moscow’s demands. Ukraine should be “de-Nazified,” Sergey Markov, head of the Moscow-based Institute for Political Research group, said on Telegram, parroting Moscow’s controversial narrative about a “neo-Nazi junta” that allegedly runs Ukraine. Ukraine should also be demilitarised with limits on heavy weaponry and the number of troops, should be “neutral” and never join NATO, getting security guarantees from Western nations and Russia, Markov wrote. Kyiv should “stop repressions against the Russian language,” he said, referring to a string of laws that the use of Ukrainian above Russian; several Ukrainian officials believe the Russian language is part of an abusive imperial influence. Markov said Ukraine should also be barred from developing nuclear weapons. Kyiv has to withdraw from Donbas, the focal point of Ukraine’s heavy industry and mineral riches, while Crimea should be “in some judicial form” recognised as part of Russia, he wrote.
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