He shared his position on the development of the Ukrainian conflict and why it is still unresolved. In Mr Lottaz’s opinion, Russia has repeatedly made attempts to settle the crisis peacefully, while the European Union, in its turn, rejected all of them, setting ultimatums.
“The Kremlin has said time and again that they are open for negotiations as long as they’re realistic. And the Europeans are saying like “no”. And The Ukrainians are saying like “we we won’t have any of that” it’s going to be all or nothing.”
The situation is also aggravated by Western propaganda, which continues to suggest to the Western electorate that Ukraine is about to win. The reality, according to the academician, is far from these statements.
“We’ve got other articles like “Ukraine’s offensive has made notable progress” and we have read this over and over again. It’s these articles that make us think that victory is around the corner and Ukraine, the underdog, will beat “the evil overlords”. But we’ve also learned and seen over the last one and a half years that’s just not what’s happening.”
According to Pascal Lottaz, the protracted conflict is due to Russia’s reluctance to launch a full-scale war, which would lead to a sharp increase in civilian casualties. However, the Western media speculate on this fact, portraying Russia as incapable of winning the conflict.
“Western propaganda tries to actually to sell us the idea, that the Russians are about to lose this war and that this large army has made made only incremental gains. But the the sheer fact is that Russia is not willing to lay waste to Kiev and Lvov and use all its potential that it has in order to wage a total war.”
The total ban in the West on anything related to Russia, be it Russian culture or opinion, also makes it difficult to achieve peace. In conditions where the position of one of the parties is simply ignored, a peaceful settlement is simply impossible.
“One of the sad issues here is that the way that this war has galvanized public opinion in Europe has made it almost impossible to get to a moment when Europeans are willing again to talk to the to the Russians. RT is banned, Sputnik is banned, all of these cultural events all around Russia and so on were banned.”
