
La Stampa 1 (Italy) Interview Concerning the Russia-Ukraine War and Peace
Published version in La Stampa (In Italian), July 28, 2026
Published English version: August 25, 2026
On: Substack
By: Ivan Katchanovski
Orlando Trinchi: Trump-Zelensky meeting: what do you expect?
Professor Ivan Katchanovski: Trump can be often unexpected and often changes his public views, in particular, concerning the Russia-Ukraine war and its peaceful resolution. I do not expect any viable peace agreement as a result of his meeting with Zelensky. Russia repeatedly stated that they would not accept any ceasefire unless Zelensky would agree to withdrawal of the Ukrainian forces from the remaining part of Donbas.
Orlando Trinchi: In your opinion, will new negotiations open to finally end the conflict in Ukraine?
Professor Ivan Katchanovski: The chances of ending the war in Ukraine via a peace deal are less than the chances of the continuation of the war until at least the end of this year. Putin and other Russian officials state that Russia can end the war on the terms of the informal peace agreement between Trump and Putin at the Anchorage summit. Withdrawal of the Ukrainian forces from all of Donbas and no NATO membership of Ukraine are key parts that reflect Russian demands. However, Zelensky and leaders of the UK, France, Germany and other European countries refused to accept it and proposed a peace deal on their terms, which are unacceptable to Russia. Marco Rubio-led Neocon faction of the Trump administration basically did the same and apparently persuaded Trump, at least for now, to do the same.
Orlando Trinchi: Donald Trump has guaranteed that Kiev will be granted a license to produce Patriot missiles. Do you think the US stance toward Ukraine has become more accommodating?
Professor Ivan Katchanovski: The Trump decision actually means refusal to sell the Patriot missiles to Ukraine via the NATO countries. The licensing of the Patriot missiles is unlikely to produce such missiles in Ukraine for a year or more. But Trump became more accommodating to Zelensky. He refused to use the leverage that the US has over Zelensky and Ukraine to compel them to accept the peace deal on the terms that were informally agreed by Trump and Putin in Anchorage. Trump also authorized the CIA to provide US intelligence and guidance for the Ukrainian long-range drone and missile strikes targeting the Russian oil refineries and Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
Orlando Trinchi: There has been a change in military leadership, with Fedorov and Syrsky replaced, but the protests aren’t calming down. What do you think?
Professor Ivan Katchanovski: These relatively small protests demand that Zelensky reinstated Fedorov as the minister of defence. Zelensky is unlikely to do this because he sacked the entire cabinet to get rid of Fedorov, his long-term associate whom he now regards as his potential rival for presidency. Zelensky wants to eliminate any potential challengers for his rule Ukraine.
Orlando Trinchi: How do you assess the course of the conflict for the parties involved?
Professor Ivan Katchanovski: The Ukrainian forces this year launched a limited counteroffensive and were able to recapture some territory. Russian territorial advanced slowed down considerably this year compared to the previous one. But Russia still advances and captures more territory, in particular, Kostiantynivka, and approaches Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in Donbas. The Ukrainian drone strikes damaged significant number of Russian oil facilities. But they could not halt Russian oil production, refinement, and export. Russian oil revenues, including taxes from the oil extraction, increased significantly because of the oil prices jump as result of the US and Israel’s’ war with Iran and blocking of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran in response.
The claims and limited Ukrainian advances and long-range strikes are used to create the alternative reality in Ukraine and the West that Ukraine turned the tide of the war and winning the war. This this done to propagate the continuation of the unwinnable war for Ukraine.
Russia by all measures is winning the war with Ukraine, which is also a proxy war with NATO. It controls close to 20 percent of the territory of Ukraine and has escalation dominance. As my open access book “The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins” shows, the war is likely to end with a partial defeat of Ukraine.
Ukraine has advantage of using NATO countries as its weapons production, supply, and repair base, which is safe, at least for now, from the Russian strikes. Russia is likely again to target power plants and powers substations when the winter approaches. Russia will try to achieve its major war goal of capturing the territory of the entire Donbas.
But the size of the territory captured is not an accurate measure of the state of war of attrition. Relative military casualties are more important. My new in press book 2 estimates that at least 230,000 Russian and Donbas separatist forces members and around 250,000 Ukrainian forces members were killed during the Russia-Ukraine war. This estimate is based on killed and missing in action individuals identified by name by BBC Russian and Mediazona and the Ualosses site and adjusted for undercounting gaps to make them more comparable. The Zelensky government relies on forced mobilization. Thousands of videos posted by Ukrainians on the social media show use of force by military draft officers to mobilize men in by snatching them on the streets, in stores, buses, parks, homes, workplaces, etc.

Footnotes
- La Stampa (lit. ’The Press’) is an Italian daily newspaper. Headquartered in Turin and owned by the Agnelli family, La Stampa is one of Italy’s oldest and most prominent national newspapers. (Wikipedia) ↩︎
- An earlier version (2013) was published in ResearchGate ↩︎







