By Kit Klarenberg - August 26, 2025

On August 7th, US polling giant Gallup published the remarkable results of a survey of Ukrainians. Public support for Kiev “fighting until victory” has plummeted to a record low “across all segments” of the population, “regardless of region or demographic group.” In a “nearly complete reversal from public opinion in 2022,” 69% of citizens “favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible.” Just 24% wish to keep fighting. However, vanishingly few believe the proxy war will end anytime soon.

The reasons for Ukrainian pessimism on this point are unstated, but an obvious explanation is the intransigence of President Volodymyr Zelensky, encouraged by his overseas backers – Britain in particular. London’s reverie of breaking up Russia into readily-exploitable chunks dates back centuries, and became turbocharged in the wake of the February 2014 Maidan coup. In July that year, a precise blueprint for the current proxy conflict was published by the Institute for Statecraft, a NATO/MI6 cutout founded by veteran British military intelligence apparatchik Chris Donnelly.

In response to the Donbass civil war, Statecraft advocated targeting Moscow with a variety of “anti-subversive measures”. This included “economic boycott, breach of diplomatic relations,” as well as “propaganda and counter-propaganda, pressure on neutrals.” The objective was to produce “armed conflict of the old-fashioned sort” with Russia, which “Britain and the West could win.” While we are now witnessing in real-time the brutal unravelling of Donnelly’s monstrous plot, Anglo-American designs of using Ukraine as a beachhead for all-out war with Moscow date back far further . . .

[SNIP]