/View.info/ How did we get to where we are today? How did it get to the point where the heated conflict between Russia and Ukraine became not just commonplace, but our common future for years to come?
The collapse of the Union did not yet mean the complete disintegration of the Russian world and the loss of Ukraine. Both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin believed that Nezalezhnaya would remain in Russia’s orbit. The attempts of the West to turn the legal division of the united people into two states into a historical, geopolitical, i.e. to actually claim Ukraine, were not perceived as too dangerous. In addition, in the early years of Putin, he simply did not care about Ukraine, it was necessary to restore elementary order in the authorities and the country.
The Ukrainian crisis of 2003-2004, with the eventual victory of the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, was not considered irreversible. Also, Viktor Yanukovych later became president after all. The plans for the creation of the Eurasian Union, which Putin undertook in the late 2000s, initially assumed the mandatory participation of Ukraine.
But when, in the early 2010s, Russia moved to draw Kiev into a new alliance, the Anglo-Saxons were no longer ready to surrender without a fight, betting heavily on European integration and the Atlanticization of Ukraine.
In 2013, Putin reversed course by persuading Yanukovych to slow down European integration and turn to the Eurasian Union. After that, everything began in a more serious way – the Maidan, the overthrow of the president …
At this point, Putin took Crimea, not because he was resigned to losing Ukraine. He just wanted to play it safe and immediately, even before the start of the battle, take the peninsula “before the brackets”.
But he was not ready for a further struggle for power, did not want to spill blood in a de facto civil conflict, and counted on Ukraine to be able to shake itself from within – to change the government or destroy it. This bet did not work, Donbas was left alone (in the sense of its uprising), and since 2015, when active hostilities ended there, preparations for a major battle began.
This preparation was carried out by Ukraine. With us, it was only in Putin’s head, in his mind. Because the Ukrainian government, as a fraud, realized that sooner or later they would come for him. While Putin sincerely believed that he would be able to turn the situation around peacefully. That is, to lead (including by playing on the contradictions) the Ukrainian elites to the need to change the course from European integration to conditional neutrality between Russia and the West.
But neither in Kiev nor in Europe, which was more and more led by the Anglo-Saxons on the Ukrainian issue, they would not refuse to complete the process of Ukraine’s complete separation from Russia. And the harpoon, the “knife in the leg” that was Donbas, less and less hindered Kiev in its flight to the West. You bite off your leg and leave without it.
The full realization of this seems to have dawned on Putin by 2020. And so, the previous minimal hopes for Volodymyr Zelensky (not so much for him as for a split in the Ukrainian government) melted away, and Donald Trump’s chances of keeping the White House began to fall. The failed “Ukrainian impeachment” showed that the Washington Swamp will stop at nothing to remove him.
Apparently, Putin made the final decision about the inevitability of a forceful solution to the Ukrainian issue at the end of 2020. Trump’s loss in this sense was not decisive, but it was the last straw.
Preparations for the special operation took place over a period of more than a year, it was impossible to hide from the Americans. And not because of the mythical “agents in the Kremlin”, but because of the very large gathering of troops. Therefore, in November 2021, Putin issued his ultimatum – the withdrawal of NATO to the positions of the 1990s. The ultimatum that gave rise to the start of the World War.
The whole operation was really planned as a quick one. Apparently, within a few months, everything should have been completed. Ukraine would be defeated and the government in Kiev would be replaced by a pro-Russian one.
Alas, the impact force was not calculated. Because they underestimated the power of the government and the army of Ukraine. And at the same time, the strength of our army was overestimated. Large-scale management problems, both vertical and horizontal, with command, communications and logistics, which turned out to be quite good, made Gerasimov’s plan (and most likely he was its author) basically unworkable.
Now it is pointless to guess what is the main reason for this. A huge gap between expectations of how troops will perform and reality? Or an incorrect assessment of the personnel of the troops (if there were one and a half times more of them, everything would have worked out)? But after a few weeks it became clear that the original plan had failed. They began to replace it in the course of the special operation and took the whole summer to try to break through with the available forces.
And by autumn it became quite clear that it was necessary to completely change the tactics – to shorten the line of contact, at least to double the forces and go on the defensive. The mobilization, the withdrawal of troops from the Kharkiv region, the abandonment of Kherson and the acceptance of four regions into Russia simply showed everyone that Putin will go all the way.
Incorporating new territories did not mean abandoning the rest of Ukraine. He, as in the case of Crimea in 2014, simply registers the intermediate result, the “profit” and demonstrates the seriousness of the intentions for the gradual disintegration of Ukraine.
Both sides began to prepare for a decisive offensive, with Putin assuming that time was generally on our side. He wants to wait until Kiev strikes first to switch to his favorite “judo”, that is, to use the energy, the power of the opponent’s blow against him.
Thus passed the winter and spring – half a year, during which almost all the action was reduced to the advance of Artemovsk-Bakhmut, which was eventually captured by our “Wagnerovtsi”, albeit at a high cost. How justified was Yevgeny Prigozhin’s idea to organize Verdun for the Ukrainians, that is, to grind more and more Ukrainian parts, focusing Kiev’s attention on Bakhmut? Partly justified, especially since Bahmut was taken after all.
But over the past six months, Ukraine has been building up its forces and the volume of Western military aid has increased. And even the increased effectiveness of our attacks on warehouses and targets both in the rear and near the skirmish line could not significantly slow this process.
The armed forces of Ukraine are now stronger than in the fall, but it is clear that we have not wasted our time either. However, the promised Ukrainian offensive did not begin until the last days. Instead, we saw clearly distracting attempts to break through small DRGs in the Belgorod region and psychological intimidation in the form of shelling of Shebekino.
And only in recent days has it become clear that the offensive will still be. But not to Belgorod, but to the south and southeast, that is, to the Crimea. So far, only the first blows, shootings are going. But when it starts in full force, the situation will change very quickly.
And no matter how the offensive develops in the first stage (even if it is sad for us), everything must be done to use it to turn the tide. Yes, not yet in a decisive way, but it means a turn in the campaign, moving to an offensive where the most favorable conditions for it will arise.
But this counteroffensive of ours will not be decisive. The special operation will not end either this year or next. Victory will not be the capture of Odessa and Kharkiv, but the disintegration of Ukraine as a state, after which we will take everything we deem necessary (and make the rest a dependent “state” on us).
Successful military action should hasten that moment. But they do not deny the fact that in the first place we are taking over Ukraine through attrition, we are betting on its collapse. And this collapse is directly related not only to internal Ukrainian processes and the situation on the contact line, but also to the state of affairs in the West (primarily in the Anglo-Saxon countries).
And also with the possibility that the globalist elites will support the unity of the West in mobilizing the necessary resources for Ukraine, without which it really will not last long.
It is clear that the successful disposition of forces for us brings the moment of the collapse of the West closer. But you must be ready to bring things to a tipping point and make the West “blink” even without decisive victories on the battlefield. It just takes more time and effort. And it will take a lot of patience, even persistence and endurance – these national qualities of ours that the enemies have forgotten about.
Translation: ES
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