Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been very demanding and attitude towards the "bottom line" of Russian-Ukrainian peace talks, and once said that he would negotiate on the basis of the Ukrainian territory in 1991, which means that Zelensky seems that Ukraine will not only take back the four eastern regions of Ukraine, but also get Crimea, which has been "joined Russia" for ten years. However, as the saying goes, "what you can't get on the battlefield, you can't get at the negotiating table", although Zelensky's attitude is very tough, it is not able to bring substantial impetus to the Russian-Ukrainian peace process.
Recently, however, Zelensky's attitude has shown signs of softening. According to public reports, Zelensky recently met with Slovak President Moussa, who came to Ukraine for a visit. During Moussa's visit to Ukraine, Zelensky publicly stated that Ukraine is considering a "peace plan" and hopes that by the end of the year, that is, within this year, the Ukrainian side will be able to work out such a plan. It is not difficult to see that compared with the previous toughness, Zelensky now has the idea of being willing to negotiate on a more pragmatic and rational basis, so why does Zelensky have such a change?
In fact, so far in the Russian-Ukrainian war, although Ukraine is a party to the war on the surface, how the war should develop, and even the direction and intensity of the war, is no longer something that Kyiv can say. Since the Ukrainian authorities today have to rely almost entirely on the United States and the West to hold out, the key to influencing the war, apart from Moscow, actually lies in Washington. Therefore, external analysts pointed out that the reason for Zelensky's change of attitude is likely to be related to the recent changes in the situation in the United States.
We all know that the United States will soon have a presidential election campaign, and the two sides of the confrontation are a pair of "old enemies" Biden and Trump. Not so long ago, Biden and Trump had their first televised debate. In this debate, Biden's image of being old and weak can be said to be vividly displayed. Although the age gap between Trump and Biden is actually not very large, the performance of the two can almost be said to be very different. Biden not only "fugued" many times, and even spoke incoherently, but also gave Trump a handle everywhere, and at the end of the day, he even had to be supported by his wife Jill to leave the scene. In contrast, although Trump is also in his seventies, he is full of energy, and he is becoming more and more courageous, and he is not in a state of "old age" at all. Overall, in this TV debate, Trump won a big victory, and Biden lost a big one.
This televised debate shows that Biden is likely to be difficult to win in this presidential election, which is obviously not good news for Ukraine. After all, Biden's group has always held an attitude of insisting on military aid to Ukraine. Trump, by contrast, has little interest in maintaining the U.S. military presence and "global hegemony" in Europe, and is willing to befriend Russia. Therefore, once Biden loses, Zelensky is at risk of being betrayed by the United States.
Therefore, it is very likely that Zelensky wants to end the war as much as possible before the US presidential election, otherwise if Trump comes to power, Zelensky, who has lost US aid, will lose his bargaining chips and opportunities with Putin. Therefore, Zelensky relented at this time, and also specifically emphasized that he would come up with a peace plan before the end of the year, most likely in order to be able to keep as many interests as possible when he still had something in his hands.
End of this issue.