Ukrainian president says Russia losing influence in Azerbaijan

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Russia has recently suffered political setbacks on the international stage and is losing its ability to exert influence over several countries, including Hungary, Moldova, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

In an interview with the Guardian, he said in April, Putin’s closest ally in Europe, Viktor Orbán, was trounced in Hungary’s general election and recent Russian efforts to support pro-Kremlin candidates in Moldova and – over the weekend – in Armenia also failed, Caliber.Az reports.

“They are losing influence in different countries, including in Azerbaijan,” Zelenskyy noted.

According to him, they are isolated “inside Europe and from the United States also. So they are alone.”

More than four years after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy believes Europe’s biggest war since 1945 appears to be slowly turning in Ukraine’s favour.

The military situation is the most promising it has been for Kyiv for two and a half years, Zelenskyy says.

“We can’t say Russia is losing this war. But we can say they are losing the initiative each day, day by day,” he insists.

Over the past week the Kremlin has suffered a series of setbacks. Long-range Ukrainian drones have hit Putin’s home city of St Petersburg, setting fire to oil terminals and sending smoke billowing above the skyline. Similar attacks have crippled occupied Crimea. A key supply road is littered with burning lorries and tankers and the peninsula seized by Russia in 2014 is experiencing severe fuel shortages.

Meanwhile, on the eastern battlefield, Russia’s grinding advance has come to a near halt. According to Zelenskyy, who since 2022 has consistently said he believes that with sufficient support Ukraine can defend against its invader, the Kremlin is losing more than 30,000 soldiers a month, with 23,000-24,000 killed and the rest “heavily” wounded.

The true figure, he suggests, could be even higher.

“Totally, this is a very big number. It means that they are not winning the war,” he points out.

Ukraine has lost service personnel too on a lesser scale.

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov