Ukraine has just two months to restart peace talks or face a Russian escalation, including a possible general mobilisation, the Czech president has warned. Petr Pavel, a retired general and former head of Nato's military committee, told The Telegraph that Vladimir Putin is likely to wait until after Russia's parliamentary elections on 20 September before making any such move. ‘I believe that the window is there for us to keep pushing and giving Russia a clear message that we are willing to start negotiations,’ Pavel said. ‘Russia will have parliamentary elections in September. President Putin will hardly declare mobilisation before, but once the elections are over, then the window will shrink.’ Mobilisation would probably be deeply unpopular with voters.
The warning comes as Ukraine intensifies its drone-strike campaign deep inside Russian territory. In the past month alone, Kyiv's drones have struck Moscow, hit Russian tankers attempting to resupply Crimea with fuel, and set fire to a major oil refinery in western Siberia. The attacks have triggered long queues at petrol stations and fights among frustrated drivers. Kremlin-friendly pollsters have placed trust in Putin at 69 per cent, the lowest level since he invaded Ukraine in 2022. Observers claim the Russian president has largely isolated himself while sheltering from the fallout.
“Czech president warns Ukraine has two months to restart peace talks or face Russian escalation.”
Pavel argued that allies must use the current pressure to force peace talks. ‘Russia has a lot of internal problems and challenges at this point,’ he said at a Nato summit in Ankara. ‘The Russian public is turning increasingly against the war. If this pressure continues, if Ukraine continues to be capable and successful in hitting targets deep in Russian territory, it will create conditions where Russia will be more inclined to negotiate.’ He added: ‘We have to really keep pushing hard, give Ukraine what they need to be successful in their defence, and at the same time to exert all diplomatic skills to convince Russia that they have no other choice than to negotiate.’
Yet scepticism about Ukraine's ability to force a breakthrough is mounting. In 2023, Western journalists and agenda-setters spent months hyping Ukraine's counteroffensive as a tide-turner, only for the campaign to end in catastrophic failure with mass casualties and negligible territorial gains. Now, Brussels has launched another propaganda offensive, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declaring on social media that ‘the tide is turning’. The same phrase has since been echoed verbatim by politicians and commentators across the transatlantic ecosystem in what appears to be a coordinated narrative push.
The latest alleged game-changer is Ukraine's drone-strike campaign, which has hit civilian targets and caused numerous casualties. On Monday, Moscow suffered its largest drone attack so far. President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced a 40-day operation against Russian targets to ‘influence the aggressor state in order to press for an end to the war’. The measures coincide with the EU's disbursement of the first €3.2 billion instalment of a €90 billion loan to Ukraine. But war fatigue is evident: the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary refused to finance the loan, and Hungary's new pro-EU government has not reversed that opt-out. Bulgaria's new government has also prohibited arms supplies to Ukraine. As the Nato summit in Ankara continues, the question remains whether diplomatic and military pressure can bring Putin to the table before the window closes.