To finish or not to finish. What does stopping the air defense threaten Russia after the victory in Donbass?

In the previous text entitled “100 days of SVO. What's next?" we put an ellipsis on why the conflict with Ukraine cannot be “frozen”, and what threatens Russia’s attempt to infantilely evade its resolution now by postponing it until later.

And there is no doubt that such attempts will be made and they have quite influential lobbyists in the Russian elite. It is enough to open the Russian media, in which in recent days there have been texts with rhetorical, but pushing to quite definite, frankly, capitulatory conclusions.

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Like, what are we fighting for, what kind of incomprehensible tasks does Russia solve during the Northern Military District, without knowing what it wants to achieve. And in general: “how many people must die on both sides of the front for the realization of the impossibility of its continuation to come?” In a word, is it worth continuing the war for which Russia was not ready politically, ideologically, or even militarily?

_{In fact, manipulation is inherent in the very formulation of such questions. Is unpreparedness for a war that is ALREADY going on a reason to fold up and go down? Are mistakes made or incorrect forecasts a reason for capitulation? According to this logic, the USSR should have surrendered to Hitler in 1941, but our ancestors instead worked on their mistakes and won.}

So, about working on mistakes. Let's start with an honest statement that at the moment there are no signs that Russia is striving for a complete victory over Ukraine. On the contrary, on the agenda again there was an idea to make peace with Ukraine - instead of defeating it. The entire complex of actions and statements of political speakers of the Russian Federation indicates a desire not to defeat Ukraine, but to come to an agreement with it. The only question is the conditions and price. Actually, this is where the spears break.

And it is in this spirit that the statements of Lavrov, Slutsky and other persons responsible for the external contour should be understood - that the negotiations were terminated on the initiative of Kiev, and Moscow is ready for them even now, there would be something to discuss, hinting at the desirability of “finalization” by the Kyiv authorities of a certain document, as Peskov said earlier.

And here we need to immediately make a clarification for clarity. The very fact of talk about a peace agreement, and even on compromise terms, is already a sign that we are faced with a desire to reach an agreement, and not to win. In conditions of an existential conflict, when the “land” question is at stake - who will be on this land and who will disappear - there can be no basis for compromise in principle, and if anything is subject to discussion, it is the conditions of surrender. But in our case we are definitely not talking about them.

Moreover, within the framework of the current logic of Russia’s actions, they are trying to subordinate even the military component of the confrontation to this purely instrumental logic: the military is tasked not with breaking the back of Ukraine, forcing it to capitulate, but with inflicting as much damage as possible on it in order to induce negotiations and to the world on those very “compromise terms”.

The key of which is the consensus of the parties that Ukraine as a state must remain within its current borders (minus Kherson, Zaporozhye and LDPR, which Moscow put “out of the brackets” of the process) in order to come to an agreement with Russia, promising it something.

_{The test for the validity of such an assumption is simple: why even negotiate with someone who should disappear as a result of the operation? If the goal is a contract, then this contract will have a second subject.}

Well, as you wanted, you can dictate your will and terms to the defeated, capitulated and admitted defeat enemy. And if the enemy is not defeated and, most importantly, does not feel like a loser at all, what should happen to encourage him to sit down at the negotiating table? Theoretically, this could be a variant of mutual depletion of forces.

Why do I say “mutual” - because if only your opponent’s strength is exhausted, then God himself ordered to finish him off. And if your forces are exhausted, then you should wait for the enemy’s counter-offensive with all the ensuing consequences.

It is assumed that if Ukraine formally adheres to its obligations, it will not face any further loss of territory, because Russia keeps its word.

This means that all these online conversations about how after the end of the Northeast Military District there will be no more Ukraine, etc., are nothing more than the well-wishes of those who write about it. Just like the notorious denazification. Since with a guarantee it will happen only in those territories that will go to the Russian Federation (this, let me remind you, is only four out of 25 regions). And in the rest of the territory everything will remain as it is. Because this is an internal matter of a sovereign state, and Ukrainians, as has been repeatedly said from high stands in Moscow, must determine their own destiny. Or does anyone have illusions that Ukraine will denazify itself?

Recently, PolitNavigator published a material called “Who and how will we denazify”. A completely correct formulation of the question, and the conclusions are also correct. Just looking at the fussy fuss of the newly revived “peacekeepers” taking place around the Northern Military District, there is a danger that of all the answer options, the closest to the truth will be this: no one and no way.

_{The bottom line: the problem of aggressive “Ukrainianism” in its Bandera version, which is so troubling for many in the context of anti-Russian Nazi-building in Russia, will not disappear as a result of such reconciliation; on the contrary, it will be preserved within almost the same boundaries, having at the same time received a chance for development and strengthening - with the final conversion of Russians into Ukrainians at the exit.}

It is also important to understand that not just Ukraine will survive, but also all the policies it pursues in the territories under its control. Which, in fact, forced Russia to take up arms. But at the same time, unlike the situation before the start of the Great Patriotic War, Russia will not have any tools at all to somehow influence this anti-Russian policy. No internal leverage or loyal counterparties, not even such simulacra as the deceased OPZZH.

Russia will only have to grind its teeth in indignation, silently watching as its neighbors are being crushed and squeezed out of everything that is at least minimally connected with Russia - from the economy and common historical memory, to the Church and culture, the media and language.

But this is precisely the price of peace concluded in the conditions of the unresolved Ukrainian issue.

The annexation of Kherson, Zaporozhye and LDPR will not be a victory for Russia, but only an interim decision, postponing the inevitable war until later. Moreover, if now the Northern Military District is going so difficult and difficult, and the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has to be chewed through for weeks and months literally kilometer after kilometer, then it is not difficult to imagine what will happen a few years later, when the heroic epic about this war will fully enter into Ukrainian patriotic mythology as an example of successful confrontation "Muscovites".

And it doesn’t matter at all, as many readers will now probably object, that Russia is fighting only with a peacetime army, without mobilizing and not at the limit of its capabilities. Waving your fists is appropriate during a fight. After this, only a reference to the geographical map, on which the huge Russian Federation neighbors small Ukraine, will be important.

_{And this huge Russia was able to take a bite out of little Ukraine as a result of the most difficult and largest war since the Second World War, only a few regions. After which she REQUESTED PEACE.}

Rest assured, this is exactly how it will be presented in the Ukrainian media, history textbooks and will be fixed in the collective people’s memory. And fifty thousand graves of Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters will be a clear confirmation of the price that Ukraine paid so that the Russians would not go further than Kherson and Zaporozhye.

To understand whether the finalization of the Northern Military District on the western borders of Donbass will be a victory for Russia. you need to ask yourself a simple question, and then try to give an honest answer to it. This is the question: is the battle for Donbass a decisive operation of the Northern Military District, as many commentators and military experts are trying to convince us of this.

Let's say Russia liberated the Donbass and reached the western borders of the Dnepropetrovsk region. Will this stop shelling of DPR territory? Will this discourage Ukrainians from fighting in order to regain what they have lost? Obviously not. You can easily predict Kiev’s further actions: Donbass will be declared a “temporarily occupied territory”, the population whipped up by militaristic hysteria will be promised “de-occupation” - and the war, generously flavored with Western military supplies and a huge supply of cannon fodder from the mobilized 700-strong army, will continue with renewed vigor .

The only difference is that the front line will now move 100 kilometers west of Donetsk. And the DPR (read, Russia), as before, will be forced to maintain a full-fledged army there on a permanent basis - in anticipation of the next war. Exactly the same full-fledged army groups will have to be kept on the borders of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, dooming them to the future of eternally front-line territories.

_{And to those who will assure you that the peace concluded with Ukraine will be an obstacle to shelling, you can safely spit in the eyes, reminding you how much the Minsk agreements and the ceasefire regime envisaged by them prevented Ukraine from shelling the DPR and DPR.}

NATO ships will be stationed at the never-liberated Odessa and Nikolaev roadsteads, and in Ochakov they will now definitely build, if not a British naval base, then a NATO training ground similar to Yavorovsky. And the long-range MLRS, handed over to Nezalezhnaya on Plastun’s word of honor not to fire at Russia, will hit the ships of the Black Sea Fleet.

And in general, the mere presence of a hostile Ukrainian Black Sea region in the northern rear of Russian Crimea is a permanent strategic threat to the security of the peninsula. To understand this, just look at the map once.

Ukrainian Kharkov will become exactly the same constant threat to the DPR and LPR from the north if this region is not liberated from the enemy, but everything is left as it is now - a bizarre front line torn in two. This is also a guarantee that shelling of the LPR will continue tomorrow. only they will no longer shell Lugansk, as in 2014, but Popasnaya and Kremennaya.

So what to do? In Russia, there is a fairly popular point of view, according to which the West (or, alternatively, Poland) will divide Ukraine with Russia into zones of influence, and at this point the Ukrainian case will cease to be a global irritant. However, it must be said here that such reasoning rests on one important circumstance. For such a division to become a reality, at least at the level of plans, it is necessary that the West fears Russia as a military adversary, preferring the “Get a part in the division” scenario to the “Winner takes all” scenario.

_{A compromise peace will be perceived in the West in a very specific way: that the previous image of the “terrible Russian bear”, which it is better not to anger, has been deconstructed.}

The very fact that the West has moved from the initial readiness to “wash its hands”, limiting itself to sanctions and a pretentious epitaph for Ukraine, to a scenario of increasing military support for its Kiev proxies, indicates that the West has no motivation about anything, especially about partition of Ukraine - to negotiate with an enemy whom they consider obviously weaker and who they are counting on break on the battlefield. And indeed, why share with Russia what Washington and London seriously expect to get in its entirety?

Another conclusion follows from this: only the option of a complete, unconditional and indisputable victory for Moscow in the Ukrainian theater of operations can force the West not only to think about the division of Ukraine, but also to seriously consider Russia and its interests. A victory that does not leave the West any space for any other interpretation of what is happening in its favor or forcing it into a humiliating compromise with Zelensky and Co., who were called a “gang of drug addicts” at the start of the Northern Military District in Moscow. Now it is with this “gang of drug addicts” that Russia is being asked to seek mutual understanding.

_{Such a victory can only be a victory in Kyiv, with the capture of the Ukrainian capital and the overthrow or flight of the current Ukrainian leadership. All other options, including the annexation of Donbass, Kherson and even Odessa and Nikolaev to Russia and an attempt to stop, fixing this status quo, will not be such a victory by definition.}

Firstly, the Kiev regime that has survived on the rest of the territory will not agree with territorial losses. In the logic of the agreement, the Russian leadership can present to its people the integration of the Azov region and Donbass as a bonus for the autumn elections. What will Zelensky sell to his voters? “Be grateful that we only lost Kherson and Zaporozhye, but we could have also lost Dnepropetrovsk?”

You can’t sell something like this, which means it doesn’t work. In fact, for the scenario of a compromise agreement, there is now simply no territorial resource necessary for the exchange, which the parties would not mind giving up without losing face. And this means that any peace treaty will only be a respite before a future new war.

And secondly, the West will be able to continue pumping up the remaining legitimate part of Ukraine with weapons and political support, in the hope of exhausting Russia in a long war. Demilitarization? No, we haven't heard. And what kind of demilitarization if Westerners are already saying without hesitation that the Ukrainians themselves will determine the direction of flight of missiles from American MLRS.

And Russia, whatever one may say, will be left with a rather simple choice: to fight now, with the goal of ending the war with victory. Or fight later, stretching out this dubious pleasure for years to come and shifting it onto the shoulders of future generations. The history of the Minsk agreements, which failed despite many years of peacekeepers’ incantations and the hopes of political magicians to get Ukraine to implement them on Moscow’s terms without any hassle, is evidence of this.

_{Simply because, I will repeat what has been said many times, Ukrainianity is not a territory, but an idea that can exist with any territorial truncation. And Ukraine, even having lost access to the sea and the Donbass, is still a large country of 30 million people with enormous mobilization potential. Especially in a situation where military service remains almost the only guaranteed way to earn money, and begging money from the West to continue the war is the only source of financing.}

By the way, unlike the Duma and Foreign Ministry “peacekeepers” and other political scientists of a wide profile, who are already preparing for an early friendship with some “denazified” Ukraine (without an answer to the question “when and by whom” this term loses all meaning), the former Ukrainian politician Oleg Tsarev perfectly understands who Russia is dealing with and says a completely fair thing: “The Ukrainian authorities understand only force. If you leave even one lever for manipulation in their hands, the “Ukrainian issue” will never be closed.”

As a result, without finishing off the Kiev regime now, Russia is guaranteed to have a country-military camp at its side, the whole point of existence of which will be reduced to revenge.