Refusal to negotiate with Russia West’s biggest mistake — UK columnist

Ukraine crisisRefusal to negotiate with Russia West’s biggest mistake — UK columnist Owen Matthews says Europe has no concrete plan to help KievLONDON, September 8. /TASS/. Ukraine’s strategic crisis stems largely from three Western mistakes, the most serious of which is refusing to negotiate with Russia, Owen Matthews, a columnist for The Spectator, argued. In his view, the West refuses "to countenance seriously engaging the Kremlin in peace talks," instead believing that "encouraging Ukraine to fight and fight forever will somehow magically lead to victory." Matthews described Western leaders’ pledges of unwavering support for Kiev since the start of the conflict as "fundamentally misleading." The columnist maintained that US President Donald Trump’s administration "has long given up on the idea of backing a full Ukrainian victory," while Europe "continues talking the talk" without a concrete plan to help Kiev. Another mistake, according to Matthews, was the West’s praise for its own sanctions against Moscow while continuing to buy Russian oil and gas. "Western sanctions have basically failed - not least because of the West’s self-preserving insistence on keeping oil prices down under the [ex-US President Joe] Biden administration and, since the Iran war, because of Europe’s hunger for Russian liquefied natural gas," the article reads. Matthews identified another Western miscalculation as its purported failure to send offensive weapons to Ukraine out of fear of escalating the conflict and a preference for prioritizing its own defense. 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