Pro-War Russian Writers Fear Moscow, Having Won the War in Ukraine, will Lose the Peace in Negotiations,, Filippov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 17 – A large share of pro-war Russia writers fear that Moscow, having achieved many of its goals on the ground in Ukraine, will lose the peace in the course of talks about a settlement according to Ivan Filippov, a specialist now living in the Republic of Georgia on the Z community as the pro-war Russian commentators are known.
    Such people still have absolute faith in Putin, he says, but they are worried that anonymous figures in the Russian government will undercut his goals and give away what the Russian military has achieved in Ukraine, reflecting their view that Russian diplomatists have often done that in the past (holod.media/2025/02/17/chto-volnuet-voenkorov-xxviii/).
    Among the examples of such comments Filippov offers are the following:
•    “Negotiations … How strongly and, unfortunately, massively, our people believe in this word” despite Russia’s experiences in the past (t.me/dolg_mini/132).
•    Unless Moscow “liberates” “the Russians of Odessa, Kharkov, Kherson and Kyiv this war won’t end even as a draw. It will end with the defeat of the Ukes but not with our victory” (t.me/Love_Russia_Beauty/16178).
•    “Let me remind you that we are not at war with Ukraine, but with the global West - the same one that is showered with compliments today. And we are not fighting for “dollars at 80” and not for Starbucks to return to Moscow... there are still at least two ‘D’’s left, have you forgotten? DE-MILITARIZATION and DE-NAZIFICATION. Have these goals been achieved? … Unfortunately, the answer is obvious” (t.me/batalyon_vostok/524).
•    “The leader of the country who has talked endlessly about the importance of sovereignty is not exchanging that for the praise of masters in the West” (t.me/chadayevru/3573).
•    In negotiations, Moscow is “betraying not only Russian national interests but the idea of a multipolar world and harming those allies in the first instance Iran and North Korea who believed the bold declarations of Vladimir Putin” (t.me/zakharprilepin/25708).