Al Jazeera: February 20, 2025

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Odesa, Ukraine, Michael Bociurkiw, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, said that Zelenskyy may have made a strategic mistake in directly responding to Trump’s criticisms. Still, he added, the US-Ukraine rift is only peripheral to the shuttle diplomacy occurring between the US and Russia. “Here in Ukraine, it does look more and more that Ukraine will have to give up territory. How much? I’m not quite sure, but we can safely assume that Crimea is gone, as well as Luhansk and Donetsk, which the Russians mostly occupy,” he said, referring to the territories seized by Russia in 2014. Last week, US Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said Ukraine must accept it will not regain those annexed territories, marking a major shift in Washington’s stance. “My concern right now is, with no solid red lines being enforced by the Americans, the Russians will do as they’ve been doing in the past two nights, pounding Ukrainian cities and trying to get more territory to kind of exploit this void,” Bociurkiw added.