The division of Ukraine will be: Putin and Biden exchanged signals
If the United States supplies Ukraine with long-range missiles, Moscow will draw the appropriate conclusions and hit those targets that have not yet been hit.
This was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who gave his first interview with the Rossiya 24 TV channel since the beginning of the special operation in Ukraine, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Firstly, similar MLRS of Soviet and Russian production are in service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. "Grad", "Tornado", "Hurricane". What is now planned to be delivered are these missiles (the range depends not on the system, but on the missile), this has nothing to do with trust or distrust in the Ukrainian regime (Kiev “promised” the United States that it would not launch strikes from long-range weapons deep into the territory RF – ed.) It depends on what missiles the Americans supply. What we hear today are missiles from 45 to 70 kilometers, depending on the type. The same with “Grads”, “Hurricanes”, “Smerchs”, they also have a range of 40-70 km, nothing new.
At the start of our operation, the Ukrainian army had approximately 515 such systems in service, 380 of which were destroyed. Some have been restored, taken from stock, they have about 360 in stock.
We proceed from the fact that this supply from the United States and some other countries is associated with replenishing the losses of this military equipment. There is nothing new here, and it doesn’t change anything, essentially. There are requests for artillery, it’s about the same here, apparently, we are talking about restoring what was lost during the fighting,” the president said.
He added that the supply of strategic reconnaissance and attack UAVs is also nothing new - “Russian air defense systems crack them like nuts.”
“There is a third component - unmanned vehicles, there are several types of them. First of all, the drums. They have been used from the very beginning, but they are used effectively only where there is no military air defense system. We have. “Buki”, “Thor”, “Pantsiri” - work extremely efficiently. Our air defense systems are cracking them like nuts, dozens of them have been destroyed.
There are reconnaissance ones, there are plenty of them flying now, and they have been supplied from the very beginning - they are all foreign-made.
There is a third type - reconnaissance UAVs of a strategic nature, they fly at an altitude of 8-11 kilometers, they have always been used. Before the start of the special operation. Over the Black Sea, over the territory of Ukraine. True, they didn’t fly to us. Used and used. It’s not entirely clear why they should be transferred to Ukraine, unless they give us the opportunity to plant them and see how they work. I don’t see any other point,” Putin said.
Returning to the topic of Western MLRS systems and missiles for them, the President emphasized that Russian troops know very well how to act in this regard.
“In general, all this fuss over additional supplies of weapons has only one goal: to prolong the armed conflict as long as possible. If long-range missiles are supplied, we will draw appropriate conclusions and use our own means of destruction. Which we have enough to carry out strikes on those targets that we are not yet striking at,” Putin said.
Russian political scientist Sergei Markov believes that after yesterday’s shelling of Donetsk and the retaliatory strike on Kyiv, things are heading towards a new round of escalation, which will also be provoked by the supply of Western MLRS.
“Perhaps Russia will lift the ban on striking Zelensky. And the destruction of the man whom Western countries present as the president of Ukraine will raise the entire conflict between Russia and the West to a new and very dangerous level. This is what the rocket attack on Saturday evening in the center of Donetsk means,” Markov noted.
Journalist Marina Akhmedova calls for taking Putin's words seriously.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Putin said about the supply of American rocket systems to Ukraine. He was referring to the course of the special operation. As I already said, both the course of the operation and its result were determined long ago. They are not just defined, they are deeply outlined. And not only the President of Russia understands this, America understands this very well. The only open question is the price. How many human lives – former and still citizens of Ukraine? Without American jet systems, the price will be lower. With them it is much higher. America’s true goal is price,” comments Akhmedova.
Meanwhile, signals appeared in the American press about the possibility of dividing Ukraine following the example of Korea, which in 1953 was divided into North and South without any peace agreement, and this state of affairs continues to this day. A similar scenario in Ukraine is not ruled out by the Joe Biden administration, according to the Washington Post. At the same time, the American-controlled part of Ukraine is planned to be turned into an “economic pearl.”
“Washington Post columnist David Ignates is considered a very informed and trusted interlocutor of the big bosses... Even if we assume that “Southern Ukraine” (here rather “Western Ukraine”) can really become “one of the economic pearls,” the key question remains - how to detect in this case, the stable 38th parallel,” comments political scientist Fyodor Lukyanov.
And columnist Yegor Kholmogorov believes that the United States is deliberately throwing into the information space a plan that is not strategically beneficial to Russia, because American-controlled Western Ukraine will play the role of a springboard for the resumption of the war.
“The West has realized its mistakes in the economic war and hopes, by freezing the conflict, to better prepare for its resumption. On the contrary, there is no reason for us to stop when strategic factors began to seriously work for us,” Kholmogorov believes.
However, the former head of the department for interregional and cultural relations with foreign countries of the Russian Presidential Administration, Modest Kolerov, believes that Russia should limit itself to annexing only the eastern regions of Ukraine. However, in parallel, carry out the demilitarization and denazification of Galicia.
“Our country (USSR) already once took Western Ukraine into its fold in 1939-1945 and gave it to Soviet Ukraine, that is, today’s Ukraine automatically:
1. And for about 10 years she waged a large-scale war against the pro-Hitler Banderaites, losing only tens of thousands of our soldiers in killed, destroying more than 150.000 Nazi collaborators in Ukraine.
2.Then it went on to essentially integrate pro-Hitler Ukrainian nationalism into the practice of the Ukrainian SSR, the economic potential of which (that is, nationalism) was built by the entire USSR.
3.Then pro-Hitler Ukrainian nationalism took power in the Ukrainian SSR and in modern Ukraine.
4. He then entered into an alliance with the West, starting in 2014 and preparing for a large-scale genocidal war against the Russians and Russia in 2022.
Why does Russia need to take over completely Bandera-era Western Ukraine for the second time? To again lose tens of thousands of our soldiers and again feed and warm a fat poisonous snake on your chest?
Who, when, how, which people, at what cost – was the Russian utopian who is now assuring his people that it is necessary to take Western Ukraine and remake the Bandera consensus personally able to reorient it? Nobody, never, no way.
Demilitarization - yes. Forced denazification – yes. But joining (for the second time) a mortal enemy to your heart is madness.
I will repeat what I already wrote publicly several years ago: Ukraine must be divided,” Kolerov believes.
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