Why does Kyiv need the scorched earth of Donbass?
Reading reports from the front, it is easy to notice that the military situation for the unrecognized republics of the DPR and LPR, although it remains difficult, is still noticeably better than the humanitarian one. Because the life of civilians in the cities of Donbass is becoming more and more difficult every day.
There is no disaster in Donetsk yet, but food is running out. Shops and pharmacies are selling their stock and closing. But the capital of the LPR has been living in conditions of a full-fledged humanitarian catastrophe for almost two weeks.
After Ukrainian artillery destroyed two substations that supplied electricity to the half-million city of Lugansk, there is no light there. Diesel generators power hospitals and the Korowai bakery. The rest of the city lives literally in darkness.
No light means no water. For this reason, fire trucks do not respond to fires. Garbage is not collected. All types of communication were lost, including landline. Old people, many of whom are chronically ill, cannot call an ambulance and are forced to die in their apartments, cut off from the outside world.
In the first days in Lugansk, the problem of drinking water was extremely acute. It got to the point where people drank water from fountains. Through the efforts of local authorities and entrepreneurs, it was possible to establish quarterly distribution of drinking water. It is given out free of charge.
And while people in Lugansk and Donetsk are busy with physical survival under the blockade, Ukrainian artillery continues to continuously attack residential areas, plants, factories, schools and kindergartens, and other infrastructure facilities. Gorlovka, Pervomaisk, Krasny Luch and other cities controlled by the rebels are also being shelled.
And if earlier one could see some selectivity in the actions of the Ukrainian security forces, now they do not hesitate to use means of destroying infrastructure. The cities of Donbass are literally being reduced to dust, like the unfortunate Uglegorsk, where the number of civilian casualties has already been lost.
In such conditions, even those industrial giants that were operating until recently are forced to close. Thus, Akhmetov stopped the main production and evacuated the workers of the Yenakievo Metallurgical Plant, which he owned, which was under heavy shelling.
Let me note that all this is happening against the backdrop of victorious reports from the ATO leadership about the impending victory and the imminent completion of the punitive operation. It turns out that the closer Kyiv is to victory, the more zealously its army destroys its supposed “trophies” - the industry and infrastructure of the most industrially developed region of the country, which provides up to a quarter of Ukrainian GDP. The closer Kyiv is to victory, the more residents of Donbass are leaving the region wherever they look.
What's the matter? Maybe someone in Kyiv found a golden key and opened a secret door to a country of prosperity, and therefore Ukraine no longer needs the factories of Donbass? Why does the “winner” need scorched earth? I understand that when the Russians surrendered Moscow to Napoleon, they, when leaving, destroyed everything around them, following the “scorched earth” tactics. The Soviet troops followed the same tactics during the retreat in 1941, evacuating everything that could be taken out and simply destroying, burning and blowing up everything else.
So then they RETURNED.
Kyiv, if you believe the reports of the ATO headquarters, is ADVANCED. It turns out that some kind of Kutuzov is the opposite.
Perhaps the key to understanding what is happening lies in traditional Ukrainian corruption? And people who imagine themselves as winners want to be not only political, but also economic beneficiaries of the “pacification of Donbass”? Maybe in the Kyiv corridors of power there is already a struggle for the percentage of kickbacks in the “cutting” of budget funds allocated for the “restoration of Donbass” (that is, what they themselves destroyed)?
I wonder if everything had turned out differently, if Fortune had turned his face to Yanukovych, and not to his opponents, would further events have developed in exactly the same way or differently? After all, the fact that “Novorossiysk separatism” is on the agenda today is a consequence of the victory of the Maidan and the collapse of Yanukovych. If Yanukovych had won, we would have Western Ukrainian separatism today. The leaders of the “three-headed opposition” would be today in the place of the leaders of the DPR and LPR, and the Kyiv media would talk about the fact that Polish mercenaries are fighting in Galician self-defense.
However, that's where the similarities would end. Because with all my wild imagination, I cannot imagine Viktor Fedorovich declaring an anti-terrorist operation against some ZUNR and sending aircraft to bomb Lviv and Ternopil.
Moreover, if such a precedent suddenly arose, then I have no doubt that, unlike the tragedy of Donbass, which is not noticed in Washington and ignored in European capitals, they fully support the war crimes of the Kiev regime, the hypothetical shelling of Galician cities from Grady and “Hurricanes” would become topic No. 1 for the European and American media and the subject of condemnation and concern of absolutely all Western politicians. Photos of Galician women and children with their heads torn off would be on the front pages of European and American newspapers
Yanukovych would have been declared an outcast, something like Saddam Hussein, sanctions would have been imposed against him, and a contingent of NATO “peacekeepers” would have been brought into Ukraine itself. And this would not require any UN consent.
Why is that? Yes, because Yanukovych was someone else’s son of a bitch for the West, and Poroshenko was “our own.” Exactly like the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza. Who, just like his current Ukrainian colleague, sent attack aircraft against rebellious cities that supported the Sandinista rebels, Until, one day, Washington decided that the game was not worth the candle, and stopped supporting “their son of a bitch.” After which Somoza fell within two months.
And this is also one of the lessons of history.
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