How do you see the situation in Ukraine after last Friday's Russian-American summit in Alaska?

Serhiy Herasymchuk: We have reached a dead end. Even if there is some kind of political solution – which I don’t really believe in – the Ukrainian constitution, which prohibits any territorial concessions, must be changed. And the amendment can only be made in peacetime, since the laws prohibit rewriting the constitution during wartime. However, to end martial law, hostilities would have to stop, and the Russians don’t want that.

I expect that Ukraine and Russia will accuse each other of prolonging the crisis: the Kremlin will accuse Ukraine of stubbornness, and Kiev will demand that a solution be found in multilateral negotiations, where representatives of the attacked state are also present. I think there is no chance of this, which is why I believe that we are on the spot.

Volodymyr Fesenko: Ukraine already announced in March what concessions it was ready for: a ceasefire with the freezing of the current front lines. What has now been put on the agenda is the unilateral withdrawal of Ukrainian troops stationed in the Donbass. There have been no specific demands in this regard yet, but the Russians definitely want this, and the Americans are hinting at it. But I think this is hardly acceptable for Kiev.

We have sad experience that if we give something to the Russians without a fight, we get a new ultimatum the very next day.

Today Moscow needs the Donets Basin, tomorrow they may want to take Kherson, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv and Odessa. And the clear red line is that Kiev cannot recognize any occupied territory as part of Russia.