The SVO will bring it to Kyiv. It’s impossible to stop in Donbass

Yesterday brought important news from the Donbass front: the LPR Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that the complete blockade of Lisichansk and Severodonetsk with the transition of the operational encirclement to a full-fledged “cauldron” will become a fact within a week at most. Similar forecasts - about the possible loss of Lisichansk by Ukraine within a few days - are made by the American Institute for the Study of War.

Thus, the optimistic forecast for the Russian Federation is that one of the three decisive battles for Donbass - the complete liberation of the LPR - could take place already in the first ten days of July.

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But this is not the end of the fighting in Donbass; on the contrary, after this they will enter their most bloody and decisive stage - after all, there is an assault on the most fortified and densely populated agglomerations of Slavyansk-Kramatorsk in the north and Avdeevka in the south.

And only after this, having defeated the Ukrainian Armed Forces in these two major offensive operations and reaching the administrative borders of the former Ukrainian Donetsk region, will it be possible to speak in general about victory in the battle for Donbass.

Military experts disagree on the time frame for this operation, but optimists point to the end of August – the next anniversary of the Ilovaisk “cauldron” – as a possible reference point marking the complete liberation of Donbass.

And here - at the very end of summer - beginning of autumn - a fork of decisions will arise before Russia, which observers are still talking about timidly and on distant approaches. A question that interests many will arise in full force: when will the SVO end?

_{In fact, this question is not idle, but absolutely logical. After all, it’s one thing to confidently declare that Russia is not chasing deadlines, and Russia can fight as slowly and as long as it likes - until it achieves results and fulfills the tasks set for the Northern Military District. And it’s a completely different matter to finally clearly formulate these still vague goals and objectives that the Russian authorities want to achieve as a result of the successful completion of the SVO. As well as what exactly is considered success and by what parameters it is measured.}

Having an answer to these questions will clarify more applied matters. Such, for example, as Russia's ability to wage a long-term war, the motivation for military participation in hostilities, and support for the North Military District in society. No, of course, from a formal point of view, everything seems to be clear and so: demilitarization, denazification, recognition of Crimea and the independence of the LDPR, what else did I forget from the list? The problem is to decipher these too general concepts so that the specific mechanisms and parameters for achieving them are clear.

Take, for example, demilitarization. Will further escalation of hostilities lead to this goal? Obviously, no, since the routinization of the conflict entails more and more armament of Ukraine from the West, pumping up the Kyiv regime with all types of weapons, including those that it could not even imagine before the start of the SVO.

Here it is appropriate to quote military expert Vladimir Orlov:

“The main task of this special military operation for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine is not combat sparring on an urbanized landscape with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Battalions. The main task is the destruction of the political, financial and other regional elite of this Kyiv regime, which in its essence is the essence that determines the existence of this territory. There will be no Kyiv regime and the political support on which it stands, and there will be no reason for combat sparring with IEDs. They will go home on their own.”

The same thing applies to denazification. The thesis has already been repeated many times that the only possible way to achieve this goal is the liquidation of the current Ukrainian regime with the subsequent cleansing and nullification of the political, ideological and media superstructure that serves it.

I repeat - complete liquidation and cleansing, and not a peace treaty and division into spheres of influence, like this is for us, and this is for the Nazis. The task is not to squeeze a piece of land from the Nazis, but to eliminate the Nazi threat close to Russia in principle.

The same story applies to the status of Crimea and the LDPR, and now other territories liberated during the Northern Military District. Russia had actual control over Crimea and Donbass until February 24. And in this sense, the game will be worth the candle only if Moscow achieves from Kyiv a legal renunciation of sovereignty over these lands, which will subsequently become the basis for the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions. Otherwise - Why?

In this sense, Lavrov is absolutely right when he says in an interview with BelTV that what is won is not returned.

Here is the quote in full:

“When they deign to approach us with a proposal to resume the diplomatic process, which, as I understand, the Europeans are urgently asking them to do, but the Anglo-Saxons do not allow this to be done, we will look at what the situation is “on the ground” - there are liberated areas there, and The majority of the population does not even think about returning again to the control of neo-Nazi authorities or authorities that in every possible way indulge neo-Nazism.”

The meaning of what Lavrov said becomes clearer if we take into account the hints currently circulating in the information space about August-September as a reference point for exiting the acute phase of the military conflict, after which another attempt will be made to persuade Ukraine to negotiate. Is such a twist in the plot possible? Probably yes.

How successful such an attempt will be depends on many factors, but personally I do not believe in the success of this kind of one-sided wishes. Simply because they do not take into account the strategy of the other party.

Let’s say Moscow liberated Donbass, reached the borders of the Dnepropetrovsk region and... And then what? Has Ukraine run out of cannon fodder? - No. Will Ukraine stop shelling the liberated Donbass from new bridgeheads? - also no. This means that the very logic of the process will force us to go further into Ukrainian territory, creating a security zone around Donbass. And it is not at all a fact that such a course of events will not bring the Russians all the way to Kyiv.

Because, in addition to ensuring the security of Donbass, the issue of ensuring the security of Kherson will arise. And this is a solution to the issues of Ochakov and Nikolaev. The question of the security of Zmeiny Island, the oil fields around it and more widely - Crimea - is already Odessa.

Well, and the question of the security of the northern Russian border region from the sabotage war on the part of Ukraine, during which Russian border guards have already died, shot recently by the Ukrainian DRG. The solution to this problem dictates the occupation of three more border regions - Kharkov, Sumy and Chernigov.

_{I repeat - all this is not the wish of mother’s imperialists dividing Ukraine without getting up from the couch, but purely practical, if you like, utilitarian tasks of ensuring Russian national security. Moreover, in a minimal way, which is called “economy format”.}

Because there are also threats of a more global nature. Alarm bells from Kaliningrad and Transnistria, the ever-present threat of Poland and Belarus being drawn into the conflict - all this - if the SVO is delayed, risks putting Russia in the future facing the threat of war on several fronts at once.

So those who want to freeze the conflict along the demarcation line based on the principle of “where they have reached” - let them think thrice. Because in conditions of unresolved contradictions and the reasons that caused them, the war will not disappear from the horizon like a bad dream, and you will still have to fight - only later.

And – returning to the idea of ​​leaving the Northern Military District with a new attempt to persuade Ukraine to negotiate. The key flaw of such wishlists is that the people promoting them do not answer a simple question: what to do if Ukraine DOESN’T WANT to agree to negotiations?

_{As for me, the answer to this question is quite obvious, but it clearly will not suit the fighters for immediate peace in the world: press as hard as they can - until the Kiev regime, by force of objective circumstances, admits itself defeated or its Western masters consider the collateral losses unacceptable.}

So far there is none of this. All Westerners - from Johnson and Borrell to Stoltenberg and even some stubborn German generals - speak in unison about the need to defeat Russia on the battlefield and about readiness for a long war in the Ukrainian theater of operations, that such a war could last several years. And yes, HIMARS is already in Kyiv.

In other words - and these are the conclusions from everything written above - without causing a complete military defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it is impossible to talk about victory on the Ukrainian front. And only a military defeat of Ukraine will make it possible to put issues of political settlement on the agenda. Everything else is sly attempts to get “into the heat before daddy.”