Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used the anniversary of his American counterpart to congratulate him and discuss the upcoming meeting during the Group of Seven summit. The very fact of this meeting is telling. More than four years after the start of the large-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, the leading states of the civilized world can neither ignore the continuation of this conflict nor resolve it. Moreover, the President of the United States is clearly interested in achieving at least a ceasefire on the Russian-Ukrainian front before the Congressional elections. This would indicate significant achievements of the administration in foreign policy.

The question is whether this can be realistically achieved and what Trump and Zelensky will discuss during their upcoming meeting. I have always said that ending the war depends primarily on Putin. After all, if the aggressor stops his military actions, there are no problems with either a truce or peace. Putin also spoke with Trump and congratulated him on his birthday. And we again saw that the Russian president has no interest in ending the war with Ukraine. He is interested in the war continuing, Ukraine being destroyed, and Zelensky being humiliated. During his conversation with the American president, his Russian counterpart once again reminded that he is ready to meet with the Ukrainian leader only in the Russian capital. In other words, he invites Zelenskyy for capitulation.

But nothing else was expected from Putin: the Russian president has long been living in his own reality and stubbornly ignores the fact that his troops fail to achieve the expected results. Putin, like any dictator, is confident that time is on his side and that he can afford to spend as much time as he wants to achieve exactly the goals he has planned.

But now the end of the war depends not only on Putin. It also depends on Zelenskyy. That is, on how the Armed Forces of Ukraine will act in the coming months, whether they can shake the Russian economic and energy potential.

We are already hearing news that was not there in the early years of this war. Both about a real fuel crisis, and about the beginning of the isolation of occupied Crimea, and about the threat to the land corridor that Russia laid through occupied Ukrainian territories to Crimea, and about fires at military-industrial complex plants, and about problems in Russian oil refining. And I have no doubt that in the coming months and years all these problems for Russia will increase.

The question here is different: how to prevent the destruction of Ukraine, the destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure under Russian strikes, the increase in economic and demographic problems. And here, without the help of Western allies, without the help of the United States, it cannot be done. The Ukrainian air defense system works incredibly professionally, effectively neutralizing the vast majority of drone and missile attacks of various types. However, it is powerless against ballistics in a situation where there are no missiles for the "Patriots." And this, by the way, could become an important topic for negotiations between Trump and Zelenskyy — for Ukraine to move from the end of the queue for these missiles to the forefront.

After all, if Russian attacks on Ukraine are neutralized and Ukrainian attacks on Russia are made more effective, this will be the key to a quick end to the war. If Russian strikes do not achieve their goals, and Russian troops do not advance — and at the same time Ukrainian strikes bring the Russian economy to its knees — then even such a stubborn fool as Putin will be forced to think about the need to end hostilities. At least for the time he needs to prepare for a new war. And such a chance should not be given to him either — by turning Ukraine into a fortress and further developing our country's military-industrial complex, with the understanding that Ukraine's fate is its defense against Russia. At least for the decades of the dominance of this chauvinistic regime in the neighboring country.

But if the United States cannot provide such support and, on the contrary, inclines Ukraine to political concessions to Russia and renunciation of its territories, then the mutual exchange of strikes will simply destroy both countries and will not lead to any results. We will live in a war that can shift from an army war to a missile war, and we will watch as ballistics turn Ukrainian cities into territories unfit for life. And this is definitely not the finale that both Ukraine and the United States would like to achieve.