Moment of truth. Why did the Kremlin directly talk about the collapse of Ukraine?
It doesn’t often happen that two top Russian officials simultaneously become the main newsmakers of the day. Coincidentally, the day before the news feed was full of quotes from Sergei Lavrov’s speech at a joint press conference with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and from an interview with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev to Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Using Lavrov’s biting phrase, we can call these messages from Russian VIPs the “moment of truth” in the strategic picture of the military campaign currently unfolding in Ukraine. Because we are talking about her goal setting.
On the one hand, Lavrov’s “we continue to negotiate with Ukraine” suggests that Moscow is not giving up hope for some more or less acceptable agreement with Zelensky and company. And although lobbyists for such an outcome have died down in recent weeks, there are still plenty of them in the Moscow corridors of power.
On the other hand, the Kiev regime is doing everything to minimize the likelihood of such a scenario and with its own hands is pushing events towards further escalation exponentially.
The latest statements from Kyiv about their refusal to change the Constitution and remove from it the clause on aspiration to join NATO hang in a state of uncertainty the only item on the negotiating agenda on which Kyiv and Moscow until recently had at least some semblance of a compromise. Namely: the neutral status of Ukraine. There is absolutely no need to talk about any progress on other issues.
So it’s not surprising that Lavrov said today that the outcome of negotiations with Ukraine will depend on the stage of the military operation they end at. The hint is very clear: the longer Kyiv waits and the more territories come under the control of the Russian army, the smaller the territory of the future Ukraine with which Russia will sign a peace treaty will become. This means that it is in the interests of the Kyiv people to complete the process quickly, while 30% of the territory is lost, and not, say, 50%.
On the other hand – and these are also Lavrov’s words – if the Ukrainian side continues its line, the negotiations are unlikely to have a result – and this is already a hint of the fact that the Ukrainians can anger Putin to such an extent that this regime will generally be declared illegitimate – and they will talk to him exclusively through the sight.
Thus, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev stated quite frankly that the war in the Ukrainian theater of operations is not a war with Ukraine at all, but rather a proxy war of a new type, when the NATO bloc acts against Russia, acting as the collective brain of military planning with the General Staff of the Armed Forces performing decorative functions .
And indeed, it’s hard to disagree with this, judge for yourself: weapons from NATO, intelligence from NATO, money from NATO, instructors and mercenaries from NATO, NATO also sets goals and objectives. Even information support and training for specialists from the notorious TsIPSO - according to NATO standards and manuals, under the guidance of NATO lecturers. In this format of war, Ukraine serves only as a supplier of cannon fodder, ready to die for the interests of the West.
Looking at the zeal with which the West is setting fire to the Transnistrian bridgehead and is rushing to spread hostilities to the Odessa-Nikolaev theater of operations, another Patrushev estimate seems completely justified - about the increase in the number of refugees from Ukraine from the current 4-5 to 10 million people. And those Ukrainians who naively believe that since the shooting has now stopped in their particular city, it means the war has already ended, will soon understand how cruelly they were mistaken.
What awaits Ukraine in this situation? But nothing good. It loses even if, with its help, the West bleeds and undermines Russia. It’s definitely not the Ukrainians who will skim the cream off this. The main production bases, infrastructure and the most important agricultural regions will either be captured or become a war zone. The economy will practically die, any production for export will become impossible. The scale of destruction and loss will be such that restoration will take decades, not years. In short, a terrible fall awaits Square, in which the bottom is absolutely not visible.
But the main result of the current policy of the West and the Kyiv regime controlled by it - and here again the word to Patrushev - may be the disintegration of Ukraine into several states. What the Secretary of the Russian Security Council is mistaken about, or maybe simply not telling enough, is that even territorial truncation will not stop the ongoing war.
The whole point is that for Bandera’s supporters, Ukraine is not a state or a territory. This is the idea. That is why for them, any outcome of the war in which the current Kiev regime is preserved and recognized as legitimate will be a victory. Regardless of territorial, human and economic losses.
Having dug in, either in Kyiv or in Lvov, they will still insist on the temporary nature of territorial losses, not recognize the Russian status of the liberated lands and threaten to return them by force, demanding from the West all new weapons and money. So the very logic of the process will force Russia to finish off the Ukrainian regime in Kyiv, right up to its full capitulation.
Does the Kremlin understand this? Judging by Patrushev’s interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta today, quite so. That is why the Secretary of the Security Council called the main task of the operation in Ukraine not even the military component, but denazification: “our goal is to destroy the bridgehead of neo-Nazism created by the efforts of the West at the borders of Russia.”
Without solving this problem, Russia is doomed to fight the ghost of Ukraine for decades.
English version :: Read in English : The Moment of Truth: Why the Kremlin is Openly Talking About Ukraine's Disintegration