This opinion was expressed by Vitaliy Portnikov on Espreso TV.“Diplomacy exhausted its possibilities in 2014, after the annexation of Crimea. There were no diplomatic possibilities to end the Russian-Ukrainian war from the moment Crimea was annexed. They do not exist now and may never exist. The only task for the West and Ukraine was to keep Russia from starting a large war, realizing that the main goal of the Russian political leadership, headed by Putin, is Ukraine's capitulation. Unfortunately, we did not manage to achieve this task precisely because many in Kyiv and Western capitals believed it was possible to negotiate with Putin through diplomacy,” Portnikov explained.According to Portnikov, Putin decided to invade Ukraine in order to replace the Ukrainian government with one that would be willing to accept Moscow’s demands and the capitulation of Kyiv.“The trigger, which made it absolutely clear to me that there would be a large Russian-Ukrainian war, was the Normandy summit after Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s victory in the 2019 presidential elections. It was during this summit that Putin realized that the new Ukrainian president was also not ready to capitulate to him and that all of Russia's expectations related to the change of power in Ukraine and the revenge of politicians who came to power on the wave of the 2013-2014 revolution were not justified. That in Ukraine, there was no longer a political elite that would, on the one hand, be guided by greater popular support and, on the other hand, be ready to capitulate to Russia. It was then that the final decision was made about the necessity of war with Ukraine to replace the Ukrainian government with one that would agree to Moscow's whims. I just could not foresee that, in 2019, Putin would see this war not as the long-term destruction of a neighboring state, but as a blitzkrieg,” he emphasized.