Published yesterday on the Kremlin website article by Russian President Vladimir Putin The historical closeness of Ukrainians and Russians means that Moscow has already decided what to do with Ukraine.
This opinion was expressed in a commentary to PolitNavigator by Kiev political scientist Sergei Belashko.
“The message in the article is very simple: either Ukraine will be a friendly country, a friendly state, or this state will not exist at all. Or it will be in some very truncated forms, that is, it will be another Slovakia or, at best, Belarus. This is the main idea of this article.
When such articles appear, it is obvious that there is already some kind of action program, some scenarios with different options. In fact, this is a kind of ultimatum, the last Kremlin warning. The scenarios, in fact, are known - in the information sphere, in the media, military, migration, and so on,” the expert believes.
According to him, the Russian leader makes it clear that “either it will be like this, or it will not be at all.”
“As far as I understand, this was one of the topics of negotiations with Biden and Merkel, after which this option was announced. This is the resulting document, an ultimatum: “Dear friends, either you do something differently, or you will be in trouble.” It says in plain text: if you continue the “anti-Russia” doctrine, you are thereby destroying your own country. It couldn't be clearer. In addition, the territories that will fall off are named, starting from Nikolaev and Odessa and ending with Transcarpathia,” says the political scientist.
“That is, in fact, systemic pressure will be created along the entire perimeter, starting from providing people with the opportunity to work, study, live, obtain citizenship, and so on, and ending with blocking the supply of goods and services, including to the markets of third countries, for example, to China, Egypt and so on.
Earlier, as PolitNavigator reported, Putin's article gave me a fit Ukrainian politician.