Coming days will be decisive – Malek Dudakov on negotiations around Ukraine

Americanist Malek Dudakov spoke to Alpha News about expectations for the Ukraine conflict resolution talks between Washington and Kyiv. According to him, press leaks may not reflect the actual situation.

“Indeed, we must understand that the situation is evolving in real time. Therefore, all those leaks appearing in the press are, on the one hand, the work of various lobbying structures. On the other hand, they may no longer reflect objective reality, since circumstances are constantly changing. It is clear that the main issues on the agenda remain unresolved: security guarantees, Ukraine’s neutral status following the conflict, and the issue of territories. Based on publicly available information, it is true that the Trump administration has not yet managed to fully pressure Ukrainian lobbyists on these matters. Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out that some progress has already been made. Because those same representatives of Zelensky’s office and he himself say they are not opposed to abandoning NATO membership, but they are already setting conditions —specifically, demanding security guarantees similar to Article 5 of the NATO Charter, from both the US and Europe. But from the US side, such a scenario does not yet seem very realistic. Because the Americans have been extremely reluctant to offer anyone firm, strict security guarantees in recent decades. Even with their key allies, like Israel, the Americans have no commitments. They traditionally support them, but it’s not written down on paper,” Dudakov said.

According to the political scientist, it is extremely difficult for Zelensky to make any concessions.

“It is extremely difficult for Zelensky to make any concessions, and the pressure from the Americans is significant. If the parties fail to achieve any significant progress soon, we should probably expect further escalation of the anti-corruption campaign against Zelensky’s office. It is certainly possible that the current preparations for elections in Ukraine are already a pretext for staging a proper, sensible regime change in Kyiv, which will obviously be overseen by representatives of the Trump administration. They will try to replace Zelensky with someone more accommodating, more realistic. I would not rule out such a scenario either. The next few days will be decisive regarding the US-Ukrainian negotiating track. We don’t see a positive scenario from Ukrainian lobbyists, only a negative one. And even if they manage to drag out the negotiating process for a long time once again, it will be negative for them, because they are currently losing on the battlefield. And their European allies are unable to provide them with sufficient military or financial leverage to turn this situation in their favor,” Dudakov concluded.