Political scientist on the transfer of Ramstein: not critical for Ukraine, an opportunity to prepare better
Kyiv • UNN
The expert believes that the postponement of the Ramstein meeting gives Ukraine time to prepare better. The US is expected to change its position on long-range weapons after the November elections.
The postponement of the Ramstein meeting, which was to be chaired by US President Joe Biden, is not critical for Ukraine. On the contrary, it is an opportunity to prepare better. This opinion was expressed by Oleksandr Kraev, an expert of the Foreign Policy Council "Ukrainian Prism", to the journalist of UNN.
"Given that Ukraine itself has admitted that our Peace Formula (the document "Fundamentals of Peace" - ed.) has not been finalized and we will hold the last meeting of the working group only on October 31, given that we see the unreadiness of some of our allies on the issue of long-range weapons, it turns out that this is not so critical for us," Kraev said.
He noted that it is not a radical issue for Ukraine to hold Ramshtan on October 12.
"This is not a radical issue for us, that if we don't hold the Ramstein meeting now, then that's it - there will be no results, nothing, and it will be a complete failure. On the contrary, it gives us time to properly work on the documents we wanted to present, finalize the issues we needed to discuss, and then go to a full-fledged meeting. Of course, the downside is that it happened so unexpectedly, the downside is that it was not worked out, but despite the reasons that the American side has, it is quite clear why this happened," Kraev said.
When asked what are the chances that the US will change its position on Ukraine's long-range capability, Kraev replied: "America will change it 100%. The question here is that it is most likely to happen closer to the elections. More precisely, right after the elections, somewhere in early November. Because then Biden and Congress will no longer be burdened by anything from an electoral point of view, from a domestic political point of view, and then it will not be a problem to make decisions on long-range weapons, and on inviting political Ukraine to NATO and many other issues."
The political expert explained that there are three months between the elections and the inauguration.
"So, accordingly, in these three months, this decision will be made by the Biden administration. Trump will definitely not agree to this. Trump will not agree to much. But this is just an additional reason why Biden will do it during this period. That is, before Trump comes to power, you can do a lot of useful things," Kraev believes.
Commenting to UNN on the postponement of the Ramstein meeting, political analyst Igor Reiterovich said that Ukraine has lost a couple of weeks of presenting the "Peace Plan".
"But since some of the provisions of this Plan seem to have not been fully agreed with our partners, we have not lost much here. The only consequence that we can have, as of today, is quite negative - if the so-called Brazilian-Chinese plan is officially presented, publicized and promoted at the BRICS summit in late October. To a certain extent, they will seize the initiative of information, and this will certainly not be very pleasant news for us, but, again, not critical, because then we will be able to focus on criticizing this plan. Or we will present our own plan by this time," Reiterovich said.
The fact that the publication of the Plan was delayed after the visit to the United States, he said, indicates that our partners clearly had some reservations about certain points, which were expressed to the Ukrainian side.
"Accordingly, we took some time to revise this Plan.
There would be little point in hiding it, for example, if it received at least political support from the leaders of European countries and the United States. We are currently waiting for this meeting, because such a presentation in parts, that is, to individual leaders, still does not allow us to declare any consolidated position, because there are points that require a personal meeting of at least representatives of three countries: Britain, France, and the United States. Some items are actually from the United States and Germany.
I think that when the meeting takes place, the Plan will not only be presented to the leaders, but will be brought into the public domain," Reiterowicz said.
Context
US President Joe Biden postponed his trip to Germany, where the Ramstein was to take place, due to the strength of Hurricane Milton.
Following Biden, Blinken also postponed his visit to Germany.
Later, it became known that the meeting of the contact group on Ukraine's defense in the Ramstein format, which was to be chaired by US President Biden and was scheduled for October 12, was postponed.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedthat the Ramstein meeting, which was scheduled for October 12, has been postponed due to the natural disasters in the United States, which require President Joe Biden's maximum attention to the domestic situation. He added that a new schedule may be prepared in the near future.
The Washington Post reportedthat Ukraine could have been offered "concrete steps" for NATO membership at the Ramstein meeting.
Zelenskyy reportedthat Ukraine will present a Victory Plan with concrete steps to justly end the war on Ramstein.
