Speaking on the sidelines of the Warsaw Security Forum about Vladimir Putin’s motivations and the West’s mistakes over Ukraine, Kasparov said: “Ukraine shows incredible resilience.”
He added that if anyone had said in February 2022 that Ukraine would still be fighting in 2024, nobody would have believed it.
But, he argued, the West has made grave errors in its handling of the war.
“The free world, led by the United States, failed to do a fundamental thing in every war, in every business, to define a strategic goal,” he said. “Instead of saying Ukraine must win, which also means Russia must lose, we hear all sorts of ambiguous statements... the lack of strategic clarity in defining the goals of this war, that's what hurts Ukraine.”
The former world chess champion went on to say there can be no negotiated settlement in Ukraine because Putin’s goal is “to destroy Ukrainian statehood” and he will see any ceasefire as a stepping-stone toward that aim.
For this reason, Kasparov argued, any deal to end the war by ceding land would not work. A temporary ceasefire without NATO membership or “boots on the ground” would not end the war, he said.
“Nothing else but the total defeat of Putin's army in Ukraine can offer us a chance,” Kasparov said. “We are not fighting just Putin or his cronies. We're fighting the imperial virus, and the only way to actually eradicate this virus from the minds of ordinary Russians is shock therapy.
“Nothing short of a Ukrainian flag in Sevastopol. They have to see the empire is dead.”
