Ukrainian Army officer: the USA becomes good for nothing

(Read also the previous interview with Merezhko.)

From UNIAN: 

"In a ground war, the Americans would be destroyed in three seconds. They have nothing to fight the Russians with, says Igor Lutsenko

Tanya Polyakovskaya, 12/25/25 

Discussions are currently underway on the basic document presented by Zelenskyy to end the war – a 20-point peace plan developed jointly by Ukraine and the United States. One of the points concerns the territorial issue, and several possible solutions are currently available. Deputy Commander of the Third Army Corps Maksym Zhorin emphasized that any attempts or even talk of officially transferring any part of Ukrainian territory to Russia are unacceptable. UNIAN spoke about this document with Igor Lutsenko, commander of the drone units and founder of the Aerial Reconnaissance Support Center.

- Doesn't the clause in the plan stating that if Ukraine invades Russia or opens fire on Russian territory without provocation, security guarantees will be considered null and void, while at the same time, if Russia opens fire on Ukraine, the security guarantees will come into effect, open up a wide field for manipulation and provocation? 

Absolutely. We've already seen this with many documents that were supposed to be security guarantees but didn't work. Guarantees that rely on arbitrary interpretations can in no way be effective. Only the presence of troops or weapons can serve as guarantees.  

I have a question: if something happens and guarantees need to be invoked, what will be invoked? Financial supplies? Will they send us some Abrams? The Abrams won't help us anymore, nothing will. Therefore, we need to have the entire infrastructure ready for defense or attack. And that's a guarantee. We see how much they deceive, how much they manipulate. I'm talking about the Trumpists and so on. They transfer nuclear weapons to us – okay, that's a guarantee, we launch them or don't launch them with America's permission. That's normal. Otherwise, nothing will work. 

- Zelenskyy stated that the United States wants "compensation for security guarantees," but he himself said that Ukraine doesn't understand what that means. What exactly could the US want? 

Money, profit. The current American administration doesn't believe that the destruction of Europe is a risk worth countering, investing in to prevent it. You just need to read Dugin and his plans: "We'll kill everyone," "We'll destroy Europe," and so on. They think they need to make money from this. They'll get their answer very quickly. But paid guarantees—let them find a price. Why guarantees? We'll just take more guarantees from them next time. That's how it works, right? 

- And how realistic is an $800 billion investment fund? 

I don't know where such funds would come from. You could even name the figure of $800 trillion. We're just taking the real deal, considering how much someone is willing to invest, and so on. These are all attempts to profit from brokerage. But there's no room for profit from brokerage, since Russia's position is very clear: "We have a Constitution, we have regions incorporated into Russia, Ukraine must leave." Until we leave, all this talk means nothing. Russia has never made its position clear, other than this. 

- The US plan is that the US will somehow pressure Europe to lift sanctions against Russia, and similarly pressure Europe to accept Ukraine into the EU. How realistic is this, given the deterioration in US-EU relations over the past year? 

Relations will deteriorate further. Because the US, under any administration—this is an obvious process—will continue to withdraw its troops from Europe, because that country is simply becoming incapable of anything. It still has some weapons, some financial resources, but they will leave Europe because they have nothing left to sustain themselves. 

There's a ground war going on right now; the Americans would be destroyed in three seconds. They have nothing with which to fight the Russians. They understand this, and so they will simply leave. 

- Zelenskyy said the referendum requires a 60-day ceasefire, otherwise it won't happen. Will Putin agree to such a step? 

This means there will be no referendum. This is a very good move on Zelenskyy's part. Obviously, in order to conduct any ballot box operations, we need to stop bullets from flying, Shahids from flying, and so on. Of course, Putin won't agree to that. 

I don't understand at all what the Americans are counting on. Did anyone ever tell them they'd stop? No one did. Right now, Putin and company are optimistic about military action. They'll continue, they believe they'll win the war, that they have the advantage on the battlefield. And so they'll continue fighting. How many times has he taken Kupyansk already? He's doing just fine. Whether he's nuts or not is a different matter, but the fact is, he has no intention of stopping. And he has no legal, political, or military grounds for stopping.

- And in this plan, there's a clause that both countries commit to implementing educational programs in schools. It's about promoting understanding and tolerance of different cultures and eliminating racism and prejudice. 

I can't imagine Russia changing anything in its programs. That's unrealistic for some parts of Russia. I think this clause is aimed at a domestic American agenda. It's meant to show that the Ukrainians tried, were willing to make some culturally anti-Russian compromises, but it didn't work out. I think this clause is simply trolling.  

Russia went to this war to restore its power. How can they allow, in this context, the rewriting of some textbooks in Russia? On the contrary, they went to this war to prescribe whatever they wanted in everyone's textbooks.

- What's the next step? Will there be any agreement on a plan anytime soon? 

There will be no cessation of hostilities; fighting will continue. This is the starting point. Everything else follows from this fundamental fact: as long as Russia can feel it can advance. 

Everything now points to it gaining a better position, meaning expanding territory and increasing the damage to Ukraine. I'm currently looking at how they're programming their "Shahed" strikes—to destroy industrial capacity, civilians. In other words, they're determined to work toward destroying Ukraine's economic potential over the next few years. Because funding for Ukraine will be increasingly scarce, they need to destroy the Ukrainian economy so that Ukrainians can't provide for themselves. That's their long-term plan.  

All these plans are simply window dressing by the American administration, promising bribes like "we'll give you 100 billion." Their plan doesn't provide for an end to hostilities, so, accordingly, there will be no referendums."