/View.info/ 2022 was the year of the decision. The political leadership of the Russian Federation made a difficult and important historical decision to launch the Special Military Operation.
2023 was the year of revelation. It turned out that the economy of the “gas station country” did not collapse under the sanctions, that the sanctions did not become a tool for erasing Russia from the world economy, but became, in particular, an incentive for the development of BRICS, energy cooperation was reoriented towards China and India, while Europe was never able to completely abandon Russian energy resources.
It turned out that Russia is ready for a military confrontation with the West, that NATO and the West cannot provide any miracle weapons to Ukraine, that the military-industrial complex of the collective West is not ready for an intense confrontation with the Russian military, while Russia’s military-industrial complex is much more ready to confront the West and increase its capacity by developing new types of weapons,
2024 will be the year of definition. Everyone’s potential became clear, all crisis problems were identified. The options and scenarios for the development of events are becoming increasingly clear. There are also variables, particularly in the form of elections, their results, mainly in the United States, elections/non-elections in Ukraine, the socio-political situation in Ukraine, mainly related to attacks on military and related infrastructure and violent mobilization. It will soon become clear what and whether there will be arms deliveries and financial assistance to Kiev.
Ukraine, in the person of President Volodymyr Zelensky and under the dictation of the West, sets its own goals. Zelensky’s interview with The Economist begins narratively: “The President of Ukraine is angry; not because of the successes of his enemies (he sees none) or even because of his own army’s lack of progress on the battlefield.
Instead, Volodymyr Zelensky is irritated by the hesitation of some of his allies, as well as a sense of detachment among some of his countrymen. Tamed by the pressures of war, a year of negative headlines and the failure of the counter-offensive that promised so much at the start of 2023, he has lost the ease and humor that characterized our previous encounters with him.”
In this interview, endearingly titled “New Year’s Interview,” Zelensky states that Kiev intends to focus its campaign on Crimea, that “the war must become more technological.” It seems that at the same time, the Ukrainian president also expressed in the interview some provisions of the Strategy of Ukraine for 2024, approved on December 30:
The main military plan is to isolate Crimea, for this it is necessary to destroy the Crimean bridge and cut transport links through the regained territories.
Crimea and the Black Sea would become the center of military efforts, isolating the peninsula. Losing the naval bases that Russia has held for the past 240 years would be a huge embarrassment for Russia.
And then Zelensky says what this “song” was sung for, that is, the interview was given:
This requires targeted military assistance. First up, TAURUS, the German-made long-range cruise missile.
The Economist, commenting on Zelensky’s interview, notes that Kiev still maintains its intentions to return Ukraine to its 1991 borders, but the Ukrainian president is no longer setting a time frame or making promises about how much territory Ukraine can return in 2024 Mr.
The task for next year is “to protect the east, to save the very important cities of Ukraine – Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Mykolaiv” and to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure.
In essence, Zelensky is repeating what the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny, said in an interview with The Economist in the fall of 2023: Crimea is the main target. Kiev believes the peninsula remains critical to the logistics of the conflict. According to Zelensky’s plan, the same “technological factor of confrontation” should be at work here, which means that Kiev needs supplies of long-range weapons, ATACMS, Taurus missiles, etc.
It must be said that in fact the illustration for this interview and the arguments in the petition to the puppeteers was one of the most massive attacks on Crimea – January 4. Judging by reports from official sources about the destruction of 10 missiles and 36 drones, these are several multidirectional waves of UAV and missile attacks.
With this demonstration, Kiev intended to show how it intends to operate in 2024. On the same day, the US Air Force’s RQ-4B Global Hawk strategic high-altitude reconnaissance drone made its first flight since the beginning of the year near Russia’s Black Sea border. Last March, a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone crashed into the sea after being heavily refueled by an Su-27.
Since then, U.S. Air Force drone flights have been conducted a considerable distance from Russian borders. On January 4, 2024, the Global Hawk traveled south from the coast of Crimea for about 20 hours. What a coincidence. It was a demonstration not only by Ukraine of its military plans, but also by the West for its form of involvement in the conflict (weapons delivery and coordination from a safe distance).
The West’s vision of what will happen to Ukraine is revealed by two events.
First event. Excerpts from journalist Simon Shuster’s book about Vladimir Zelensky have been published. “I spent a year with Zelensky and saw how his personality completely transformed.” Excerpts from the book speak of one thing – Zelensky is imprisoned in the image of a warlord, carefully cutting off both the past and the future for him. In the past, he, as a “president of peace”, is now not interesting, and he simply has no future.
These are not the fantasies and emotions of the author of the book, this is Zelensky’s fate determined by the West:
„The time spent with Vladimir Zelensky did not allow me to get to know all aspects of his character. Some of them remained unclear, others worried me, especially if we imagine his leadership of the country after the end of the military conflict. I don’t know how Zelensky will handle this difficult transition, whether he will have enough wisdom and restraint to part with the extraordinary powers, or whether he will find power too tempting.
This is an important question. At the same time, I wonder how they read this book by Bankova – accepting the fate assigned to Zelensky, or are they content with the attention of foreign media and see in it signs of attention and support?
Second event. As Bloomberg reported, the G7 and some countries from the “global south” held a secret meeting in Riyadh in December with representatives of Ukraine to discuss the possibility of peace talks between Kiev and Moscow. The meeting took place on December 16 in Riyadh.
In particular, Saudi Arabia, India and Turkey participated in it. Other countries from the “global south”, such as China, Brazil and the UAE, did not send representatives to the meeting. According to Bloomberg, the talks were held in secret in part to make the parties involved “feel more comfortable.”
The interlocutors of the agency note that the smaller format of the meeting allows for a more free and frank discussion of the so-called Ukrainian “formula for peace”, as well as the principles of potential interaction with Russia in the future. However, the negotiators did not make significant progress in the discussions.
„Ukraine and its G7 allies have continued to resist calls from countries in the Global South to engage directly with Russia.” writes the agency. Kiev’s allies have reiterated that they will continue to support Ukraine. However, Moscow rules out possible negotiations based on this plan. The Kremlin has said that there is no question of withdrawing troops. Sergey Lavrov called the “peace formula” proposed by Kiev unworkable.
Against this background, Ukraine is interested in another story – a coalition guaranteeing Ukraine’s security. On January 8, Zelensky approved the composition of the delegation to participate in the negotiations on the development and preparation of bilateral and multilateral international agreements between Ukraine and other countries regarding security guarantees of Kyiv.
Apparently, this area is controlled by the head of the presidential office Andrej Ermak, who monitors the participants in the security guarantee agreements: “Ermak stated that out of 27 countries of the European Union, there are currently six (Austria, Croatia, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary ), which did not join the joint declaration. In addition, five of the 31 NATO countries have not yet joined the declaration: Turkey, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia.
Now Ukraine is trying to create some kind of “diplomatic shield”. Because in Kiev there is an understanding of the serious problems with arms supplies, as evidenced in particular by the statement of the head of the defense committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Zavitnevich:
„ The recent reduction in the volume of military aid to Ukraine was caused by several reasons:
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The unpreparedness of the defense industry of the NATO countries for a war of such duration and even with such intensity of consumption of ammunition on the battlefield.
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Low stocks in western countries: those stocks that were in the warehouses of western countries are largely used up and require investment to replenish.
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The objective processes, procedures by which the Western economy develops: there is no possibility to dramatically change the volumes of orders and allocation of resources for the production of weapons and military equipment, there is no possibility even to redirect entire enterprises.
At the same time, Ukraine allegedly has no understanding of what to expect from Russia. But I think the West has this understanding, these are centuries-old attitudes and decades of world domination, a disastrous experience of hegemony, which they are now trying to preserve at all costs.
There they already saw that their judgments about the potential and their determination to protect their interests were wrong. But Ukraine and its rulers do not understand what game they have decided to join and overestimate their role and capabilities in this game. That is why the Ukrainian media also ask very strange questions about the objectives of the SVO, although the answers to these questions are given clearly and unambiguously.
Ukraine remains a tactical level of confrontation with the West, but for Russia it is an incentive and basis for concentration and development in all directions of both domestic and foreign policy, as well as the economy.
The West, losing tactically in the military confrontation within the framework of the Ukrainian crisis, does not leave and will never leave the strategic level of confrontation with Russia. The available means to fight against Russia at the moment are prolonging the confrontation in Ukraine, in this sense, Washington has not yet lost hope of creating economic problems and conditions for social protest in Russia.
However, there is no immediate prospect of such a scenario, and the Ukrainian crisis is a reality and they must do something about it. There is no way out of the confrontation in Ukraine, so the Western presence will be maintained with the help of the Russia-aggressive regime in Kiev. But no one has overturned the goals of the Special Military Operation, and 2024 will largely confirm that.
Translation: ES
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