Lucas Martín: "Russia's reaction is that of a knocked-out boxer"

In the latest edition of "De Cara al Mundo", on Onda Madrid, we continue with the analysis of Ukraine by Lucas Martín, expert international analyst and collaborator of Atalayar. The latest Ukrainian attacks in Crimea and the continuity of Ukrainian grain exports are two of the topics analysed.

Ukrainian special troops are once again active in Crimea and Russia is not reacting, what is going on there?

We don't know what is going on. There is still uncertainty as to whether it is a missile attack, with a type of missile that was not known until now or that Ukraine has developed. I remember that, until before the war started, Ukraine was developing a missile of its own, but it had to stop. It is not known whether it has taken it up again, whether they are partisans, whether they are special operations units or whether they are airborne invasions. What this does is generate a great deal of uncertainty within the Russian forces, I would even say it generates panic, because they are being subjected to attacks that it is not known who is provoking them and that anyone can be the target of an attack at any moment.

Russia's reaction, in my view, can be likened to that of a knocked-out boxer, because it is constantly being hit. And we are always used to them responding with a kind of retaliation for these attacks, but there is no forceful response from Russia, not even a launch with kalibr missiles, which leads me to think also that Russia is beginning to have a serious shortage of this type of munitions.

In addition, it is worth noting something that is perhaps more symbolic than anything else, namely the destruction of the Wagner HQ, the Russian mercenaries in the Donbas.

This is a clear example of what has come to be called the Tik Tok war, that is, this mania of the combatants in the war to make videos of themselves and upload them to social networks, or to let certain journalists record images or broadcast them without any kind of control. There was a newspaper report in which images were recorded and broadcast on social networks where the location of Wagner's headquarters was clearly visible. Obviously, within ten minutes, a Ukrainian artillery attack wiped that HQ off the map.

This is a beginner's mistake. Above all, we saw it at the beginning of the war with Kadyrov's boys taking videos of themselves and posting them on all sorts of networks doing things that nobody understands.

Do you think all this might influence whether President Zelenski has more or less to negotiate, or does he still insist that until there is a Russian withdrawal he has nothing to negotiate? We have seen this with UN Secretary General António Guterres or Turkish President Erdogan.

When you go to negotiate, you go for the maximum. Zelenski, both for the sake of negotiations and for the sake of his people, has to ask for the maximum, and that is for Russia to withdraw completely from his territory. We all know that this is not going to happen, but he has to go to the negotiation asking for the maximum, in order to keep going down and reach the point of what would be acceptable. Zelenski is aware that sooner or later negotiations will have to take place and that Russia is not going to give up everything. However, until that moment arrives, they are going to try to be in as strong a position as possible in order to reach those negotiations in the best possible conditions.

At the moment, there is some relief because the export of grain is continuing and there are no problems with those tonnes of grain leaving Ukraine.

Yes, this will continue until Russia finds an advantage to avoid that grain export. The moment it finds a way to blame Ukraine for that grain export being cut off, and thinks that it will work to its advantage, it will do so. Of that we have no doubt.