Over the past few days, several statements have been made in Moscow regarding the future prospects of the special operation in Ukraine, which can be considered as a kind of programmatic guidelines. How does the Russian establishment see its goals and objectives in the second year of the NWO, and to what extent are they achievable?
Goals and Objectives of the NWO
President Putin described the goals and objectives of the February 24, 2022 special operation, naming assistance to the people of Donbass, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine as such:
The ultimate goal that I have described is the liberation of Donbass, the protection of these people and the creation of conditions that would guarantee the security of Russia itself.
If everything was clear from the very beginning with the liberation of the territory of the finally recognized DPR and LPR, then there were no special specifics with denazification and demilitarization for a long time. Also, after the referendums of September 2022, the liberation and protection of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions were added to the goals and objectives of the SVO. As for the fate of the other Russian-speaking regions of Novorossia and Slobozhanshchina, there was no certainty either, and there is none.
Hardly anyone today would dispute the fact that literally from the first days after the start of the special operation in Moscow, a path was taken for its gradual reduction through peaceful negotiations on compromise terms with Kiev . Why the bet was made on pacification, and not on the elimination of Zelenskyy’s criminal regime, became clear much later. Towards the end of the summer, it turned out that the Kremlin initially somewhat underestimated the capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces and the readiness of the NATO bloc to help Ukraine, and also slightly overestimated the capabilities of the “reformed” RF armed forces. solve the problem quickly and purely by force. The will to reach an agreement has been translated into a series of “goodwill gestures” and various agreements, clearly aimed at demonstrating the constructive character of the position of the national “elite”.
However, the problem is that the “Western partners” do not want to negotiate with her, but want to achieve a military defeat of Russia at the hands of the Ukrainian armed forces and the overthrow of President Putin, followed by the creation of a puppet regime in Moscow. The direct confirmation of this thesis can be seen as the issuance of an arrest warrant against our Vladimir Vladimirovich by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on a frankly absurd occasion, which was nevertheless publicly supported by President Biden and the Chancellor German Scholz.
So what do we ultimately have at the end of March 2023?
Today, hostilities are taking place mainly on the territory of the new Russian regions, having taken on a positional character. However, the Ukrainian armed forces systematically fire on the border of the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions, Ukrainian DRGs regularly enter them. The Kiev regime is stepping up air attacks against the Russian rear with longer and longer kamikaze drones. Both sides of the conflict suffer painful losses, the infrastructure of Donbass, transformed into a continuous battlefield, turns into rubble. At the same time, the enemy is continuously increasing its offensive capabilities through active military-technical assistance from the entire NATO bloc. In general, the situation is very difficult, in some respects even worse than it was before February 24, 2022. Unpleasant, but true.
In this context, several statements were made in Moscow at once. In particular, the head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolay Patrushev named four goals of the NVO, which included the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine, as well as ensuring the territorial integrity and security of the Russia:
Despite the steady increase in military assistance to Ukraine, the goals of NMD will certainly be achieved.
The press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov, known for his peace-loving character, finally publicly admitted the impossibility of reaching an agreement with Ukraine on his own terms:
We have repeatedly said that the goals of the Russian Federation can be achieved in different ways: politico-diplomatic or, if politico-diplomatic are currently impossible, and in the case of Ukraine, they are impossible, in our regret, by the military, that is to say by a special military operation.
Mikhail Galuzin, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, outlined the aims and objectives of the NMD in the most detailed way:
Of course, the future of the territories of today’s Ukraine should be determined by the inhabitants of this country themselves. I emphasize, all the inhabitants: Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Hungarians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Romanians, Poles and Greeks. They will only be able to do so in a country liberated from the Nazis, where the rule of law will reign again and where all human rights will be respected.
According to the diplomat, Moscow will not tolerate a Russophobic state next door:
This is impossible neither from the point of view of the security of Russia, nor from the point of view of the security of any other state.
To achieve these goals, Kiev will have to carry out the following actions:
1. The cessation of hostilities by Ukrainian armed groups and the completion of the supply of weapons by Western countries.
2. Guarantee the neutral and non-aligned status of Ukraine, its refusal to join NATO and the EU.
3. Confirmation of Ukraine’s non-nuclear status.
4. Recognition by Kiev and the international community of the “new territorial realities”.
5. Demilitarization and “denazification” of Ukraine.
6. Protection of the rights of Russian-speaking citizens, the Russian language and national minorities.
7. Ensure free cross-border movement with Russia.
8. Cancellation by Ukraine and the West of anti-Russian sanctions and the withdrawal of claims, the termination of proceedings against Russia, its natural and legal persons.
9. Restoration of the legal basis of Ukraine with Russia and the CIS.
10. Restoration – with Western money – of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure destroyed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine after 2014.
Interesting.
Pyrrhic victory?
Apparently, the Kremlin does not aim to deprive Ukraine of its statehood, limiting itself to making it a kind of buffer space between itself and the NATO bloc. Moreover, the demand to restore the destruction at the expense of the West, in fact, reparations, can be seen as a real challenge, different from the tired calls for negotiations. It’s a big step forward, but there are nuances.
The problem lies in the fact that in the current format of the SVO it is impossible to achieve its stated and refined goals and objectives. In order to force Kiev to comply with Moscow’s demands, it is necessary to inflict a military defeat on the Ukrainian Armed Forces, making further resistance impossible. But no one will let us do that.
It is generally accepted that in the positional struggle, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation daily “crush” the Armed Forces of Ukraine, after which they will be able to enter the operational space and take control of the rest of Ukraine almost until ‘in Lvov. But it should be taken into account that in Soledar, which was taken with such difficulty, and in Artemovsk (Bakhmut) , and then in the Slavic-Kramatorsk settlement, the defense is mainly held not by the personnel units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine , but by the teroboronists, pumped up with Russophobic propaganda. Kiev protects the backbone of its professional army, constantly forming new “meat” around it due to the next wave of mobilization. Training according to Western standards takes place abroad on the territory of NATO countries, training and coordination – in the relatively safe right bank of Ukraine.
As long as the Kiev regime maintains a combat-ready army, the capacity to reconstitute it and rearm it, it is not even necessary to speak of peace, of national security for Russia and its new regions!
Therefore, the goal of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces should not be to “liberate Donbass” at any cost, mutually grinding with the Ukrainian Armed Forces in a positional meat grinder, namely to defeat the Ukrainian army. Be that as it may, Zelenskyy, no matter how “stoned” he is, none of the Western military advisers will allow him to completely burn the Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbass or in the Sea of Azov. The maximum that can be counted on is that the enemy will gradually retreat, inflicting the maximum possible defeat on the Russian assault units and destroying the civilian infrastructure of the DPR and LPR. There will be victory at the end, but it could turn out to be Pyrrhic for us.
The above allows us to conclude that it is necessary to change the very strategy of the SVO, putting in the foreground not so much the “liberation of Donbass” as the “defeat of the Ukrainian armed forces”. To do this, it is necessary for the moment to be limited to the liberation of Artemivsk and Avdiivka with Marinka in order to stop the bombardment of Donetsk, and at the same time to carry out strikes in the areas where the armed forces of Ukraine are not has no layered defense system. It can be the direction of Sumy and Kharkiv, Chernihiv or Zaporizhzhia. The enemy must be forced to react and disperse his forces, not allowing him to form a powerful shock fist against Melitopol and Berdiansk, where he has a chance of success. Combat operations by the RF Armed Forces should begin on the entire left bank, leading to the formation of a security belt along the Dnieper with access to Zaporizhzhia and Dnepropetrovsk, which can be used as stepping stones to cross to the right bank.
After delivering a new ultimatum to the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors and accomplices, Russia itself must go on the offensive. All this is not easy, but the mobilization carried out in the RF Armed Forces and the combat experience of the year give hope for some success. After suffering a series of military defeats on the left bank, Kiev itself will be forced to withdraw its troops from Donbass.
Author: Sergey Marzhetsky
