Ukrainian leadership is delusional – expert

The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine would have never happened without the interference of the West and its “insane” idea of an ever-expanding NATO bloc, Tarik Cyril Amar, an associate professor at Koc University in Istanbul, believes.

Speaking to RT’s Oksana Boyko on Worlds Apart, the professor shared his thoughts on the insistence of both Kiev and its Western backers on inflicting a decisive defeat on Russia on the battlefield, which seemingly remains unchanged despite all the setbacks the Ukrainian military has suffered. For Kiev, such a belief might actually be genuine, he suggested.

“Regarding the Ukrainian leadership, I would not be able to tell. I have a guess that President Zelensky himself is, basically, delusional and has become drunk on his own rhetoric as well as the flattery that he used to receive from the West. I think it has really deranged him a bit and disturbed his relationship to reality,” the historian suggested.

In the West, however, the understanding that such a goal was not actually a viable one has seemingly become more prominent, yet it still remains unclear to what extent exactly. Therefore, the persisting talk about continuous support for Ukraine is, at least partially, a “negotiation tactic” on the West’s part, the professor suggested.

“Concerning the West, my guess is that quite a few people in Washington and in the EU as well understand that they have to get out of this war without a Russian defeat. Now do they understand already how much they have to concede? Again, I can’t tell,” Amar stated.

Western, and the US in particular, policy and decision makers apparently still “live in the 1990s” and refuse to realize that the age of “unilateralism” is over now. Russian leadership, as well as elites of other powers, such as China or Iran, on the contrary, live in the present, Amar suggested.

Without western interference, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow would have never started, while multiple opportunities to bring it to an end were deliberately sabotaged, including the Minsk agreement of 2015 or the Istanbul talks of March 2022, Amar noted.

“The roots of the war do really go to 2008, the infamous Bucharest summit, when both Georgia and Ukraine were put by the West into this insane position of saying’ One day you’ll be in NATO, but not now,’ which, of course, exposed them and made them threats for Russia.”

The West’s insistence on fueling the conflict largely stems from two ideas, Amar explained. The West “simply won’t give up on its idea of expanding NATO, which in itself is an insane idea,” as well as pursues a “long-term geopolitical strategy of getting Russia down,” as it refused to accept Moscow’s resurgence following the 1990s turmoil.

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