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The first part of an exclusive interview of the second President of Ukraine (1994-2005) Leonid Kuchma with the Interfax-Ukraine agency

How do you assess the realistic prospects and conditions for ending the war? What changes in foreign and domestic policy should be made, in your opinion, to improve the situation before then?

It is difficult to make a realistic assessment of the prospects for war today. We can make predictions and build theories, but until the US elections and the first real steps of the new administration, there are many unknowns in all calculations. Today we can give guesses rather than answers, and this is irresponsible.

I don't want to give our government any recommendations or advice. People are working, and they probably have their own strategy. There are action plans that we do not know about. So I'll say what I think is most important.

In domestic politics, it is internal unity. At the beginning of the Great War, we had it. The army, society, and the government were, so to speak, a monolith. Even within the political elite, there was no infighting for a while. Today it is no longer the case. First, our elite resumed the rat race of their petty interests. Then the contradictions between the government, the army, and society began to emerge. Not conflicts, God forbid, but real contradictions. From the front, we hear reproaches against the military and political leadership on various occasions - organizational, operational, tactical, and informational. Dissatisfaction with the army's demands to intensify mobilization is growing in society. The authorities accuse society of being insufficiently prepared to defend the state. There are calls from society for the government to set an example and