Destroying Ukraine Has 'Totemic' Role For Russia, British Expert Says

(MENAFN- UkrinForm) British expert Jade McGlynn, Head of the Ukraine and Russia Program with the Centre for Statecraft and National Security at King's College London, said this in an interview with Ukrinform.

“Their entire ideology revolves around claiming that the Ukrainians are just Russians who've been brainwashed or being used by the West as their proxy element,” the expert said.

In this regard, she believes the only thing that will change the calculus in the Kremlin would be if Moscow“has to choose between the stability at home and continuing to prosecute the war.”

“Destroying Ukraine has taken on this totemic role within the Kremlin's vision of Russia and its role in the world so the only thing that would force a reconsideration or recalculation would be if there begins to be a lot of trouble at home. I think the focus should be on the home front, the deep strikes on various elements, exerting much more pressure on the economy,” McGlynn said.

She believes the Russian people will not necessarily rise up against the regime, but such social tensions“always find a way, sometimes in quite unexpected ways.”

According to the researcher, many Russians are still“very happy to go along with the war, provided it doesn't affect them.”

“So, I think it's reasonable to show, including through petrol prices, the millions that make this war possible, whether because they work in the propaganda studios or in military production factories, or simply paying taxes, that there are consequences and that you can no longer ignore the war. It can no longer remain just some special military operation somewhere far away that you don't need to know about,” the expert said.

Therefore, she believes, any measures that increase this pressure would be helpful.

At the same time, she stressed that the West needs to do more to support Ukraine, particularly as winter approaches, including by providing more interceptor missiles.

“We've seen some very positive moves from European countries in the last few days in terms of procuring them. But it's also about ensuring that Ukrainians have generators in order to have access to heat over this winter, because if this is going to end up being a race to exhaustion, then we need to be doing a lot more to ensure that it's not Ukraine that's exhausted first,” the expert stressed.

Read also: Trump says Ukraine and Russia agree not to attack energy facilities

As reported, on Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump called on Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries amid a sharp rise in diesel fuel prices worldwide.

Earlier, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he believed Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries had affected diesel fuel prices in the United States.

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