International Business Times quotes Mikhail Khodorkovsky from an Atlantic Council event on Russia’s strategic interest with the West:
On Wednesday prominent Russian opposition activist Mikhail Khodorkovsky said that he didn’t see such an end in the near future. “A freezing of the conflict is the only reasonable expectation,” Khodorkovsky said during a speech at the Atlantic Council in Washington, while also warning that sending US weapons to support Kiev’s cause would only make the war worse, adding that “this situation is going to keep on developing in this direction if [US] arms start being shipped to Ukraine,” he said. A resolution passed by the US House of Representatives calls for doing just that, but President Barack Obama has so far refused and there are no US immediate plans to send weapons on top of the military support equipment being given to Ukraine.
Khodorkovsky also predicted that the standoff between Kiev and Moscow over the annexation of Crimea and the war in East Ukraine could last as long as the division of North and South Korea, which began in 1948 and continues today.