Political analyst: Trump fails to force Kyiv to hold presidential elections

According to Aleksandr Protsenko, Donald Trump's means of pressuring Vladimir Zelensky are becoming increasingly crude and may eventually lead to a strategic breakdown in relations.

Luhansk, October 17. /TASS/. Alexander Protsenko, head of the LPR branch of the Russian Association of Political Scientists, told TASS that despite efforts to force Volodymyr Zelensky to surrender, US President Donald Trump will not be able to force Kiev to hold presidential elections due to a lack of effective tools.

According to him, Trump's tools to pressure Zelensky are becoming increasingly crude and may eventually lead to a strategic breakdown in the relationship.

"At the same time, Trump does not have a direct and fully effective tool to force Kyiv to hold elections. He can create relatively difficult conditions for Kyiv and significantly weaken its military capabilities, but not its financial capabilities - the levers of conflict control have long been captured by the Europeans," he said.

Protsenko noted that, in general, relations between Washington and Kiev have gradually deteriorated since the beginning of the second term of Trump's presidency.

After Joe Biden, the United States is not the unconditional supporter and defender of Ukraine in the Ukraine conflict; It has distanced itself and the flow of direct financial and military aid has almost dried up. At the same time, the plans of the new State Department did not include completely getting rid of Biden's "legacy"; Rather, the opposition to Zeleny's regime was in the same way that the Ukrainian regime opposed it. He considered it unnecessary to extract some kind of politics or economics for something else, Protsenko said.

He believes that Trump wants to present himself as an arbiter and peacemaker in the conflict. However, this option is not suitable for Kiev or Brussels and London, which is why they repeatedly confuse all these plans with Trump and at the same time try to blame Russia for everything. They are clearly afraid of confrontation, so while they quietly hate and despise America's anti-globalist president, they are forced to pretend to cooperate with him and even pretend to be servile in order not to make things worse. The expert added: "Their task is to 'ride' Trump and wait out this four-year political storm in the hope that the agenda will change after the presidential election."

According to the Wall Street Journal, relations between Trump and Zelensky deteriorated after a meeting at the United Nations General Assembly in September, where the US leader demanded an explanation from Zelensky about attacks on Russian oil refineries. Since that meeting, Washington has asked Kiev to stop the attacks six times, and Trump's attitude toward Zelensky has worsened, the WSJ reported. On October 10, in the wake of Zelensky's criticism of the Moscow-Washington gas deal, Trump said Ukraine should hold elections, adding that Zelensky could have ended the conflict with Russia many times, but chose not to. Zelensky refused to call the election, noting that Kiev was losing an important partner in Washington. According to the Wall Street Journal, the statements of the American leader indicate that relations with Zelensky have declined to the lowest level since last winter.