Proposals and hypotheses about the conclusion of the conflict are multiplying, but for Putin the possible negotiations with Trump would be only an intermediate stage in a process that must continue. Meanwhile, for Ukrainians, the situation is becoming increasingly dramatic, not only due to uncertainty about Western aid but also due to the decreasing participation of citizens in defense actions.
After the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, an event that closed for this year the “electoral world war”, one of the variants of the hybrid war of politics and propaganda, proposals and hypotheses about the end of the war on the ground in Ukraine and Russia. To what extent Vladimir Putin is willing to accept a solution through peace negotiations, or, on the contrary, take the confrontations to an increasingly high and destructive level, is a question that is not easy to understand given what happened in the last few days.
The use of long-range American weapons by the Ukrainians has caused Putin to approve the “new doctrine on nuclear weapons”, a doctrine that can be summarized in a single phrase: “we will destroy all Ukrainians and their allies”, reinforced for the demonstration with a “hypersonic missile” that was launched over the city of Dnipro, one of the tsar’s favorite toys, although it was not equipped with the nuclear warhead. It is clear that these threats remain within the scope of war rhetoric, although since the beginning of November Putin has not stuck his nose out of his bunker again. The Kremlin repeats that it is willing to start negotiations on condition that the Ukrainians abandon the occupied territories in the Kursk region, while Zelensky repeats that precisely the attack on Kursk is the guarantee that negotiations begin, which both parties intend to carry out. out from a “position of strength.”
Indeed, after the surprise attack on Russian territory, Putin’s counteroffensive was very determined and violent, with the help of the Akhmat battalion of Chechen volunteers and the arrival of thousands of soldiers from North Korea. However, despite three impetuous waves of assaults against the Ukrainians, the Russians have still not managed to fully recover the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces still control an area of about 600 square kilometers, and if Putin previously demanded the handover of the entire territory of the occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia regions of Ukraine, now repeats that negotiations will only begin with the liberation of Kursk. On the other hand, Moscow has also intensified attacks with Iranian Shahed missiles against the main cities of Ukraine, kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa, and peace seems less likely every day.
The offensive also continues at full speed in the Donbass, where the Russian army is one step away from conquering another “strategic point”, Kurakhovo, which would give access to one of the most important cities in the Donetsk region that is still in the Ukrainian side, Pokrovsk. Until 2016, this provincial capital was called Krasnoarmeisk, in honor of the Red Army, as the Russians want it to be called again after the “liberation”. From here, Moscow’s armies could also try to make their way towards another Ukrainian region, that of Dnepropetrovsk, relaunching the project of “denazification” and conquest of all of Malorossiya, with great enthusiasm of all the Russian propagandists who are already talking about the inevitable fall of Ukraine, which will also be abandoned by the Western allies.
The situation for Ukrainians is becoming increasingly dramatic, not only due to the uncertainty about Western aid and the unknown of Trump’s future decisions, but also due to the decreasing participation of citizens in defense actions, with almost ten thousand desertions of soldiers who have fled the battlefield in recent months. Ukrainian journalist Vladimir Bojko speaks of 93,500 people investigated for desertion since the Russian invasion began in 2022. For its part, the Russian war industry has been reorganized in the last six months, since economist Andrej Belousov was placed at the head of the Ministry of Defense, and it is estimated that in the next year Moscow will be able to produce 30% more artillery ammunition than all the EU countries combined, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs also recalled Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Andrej Sibiga, in the recent meeting in kyiv with Joseph Borrel.
The end of the war, in Putin’s intentions, can only be the end of Ukraine, and possible negotiations with Trump would only be an intermediate stage of a process that would continue later, even without foreseeing a conclusion, as a “perpetual war “against the entire West. In this, the leadership of the Defense sector plays a very important role, now in charge of the “orthodox-patriotic” minister Belousov, who took over from the eternal Sergei Shoigu, who has been part of the government since the times of Yeltsin and is the current one. secretary of the Security Council, while all of his collaborators in the ministry that he led for twenty years are now in jail for corruption and various embezzlements.
In reality, Belousov had been dealing with military issues since the invasion of Ukraine began, when he was Deputy Prime Minister of Economy and was conducting stress tests to find a way to counteract the inevitable Western sanctions, trying to steer the Russian economy in a war direction. global. Even earlier, as early as 2013 – as the center documents Dossier – dealt with “various issues related to armaments at the administrative level” and collaborated with the operations of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner company. The minister is now compared to historical figures such as Generalissimo Aleksandr Suvorov, who paved the way for Russia’s victory over Napoleon, or the early 20th century prime minister Petr Stolypin, who pointed the way to “patriotic reforms” even to Mussolini and Hitler, and also with the American hero of the resistance to all powers John Rambo, to the point of earning the Russified title of Rambovich.
The new minister has carried out a thorough “cleansing” of the Russian Defense Ministry, starting with the April arrest of former deputy minister Timur Ivanov, and opened an investigation that has already involved more than twenty top-level officials. Instead, he appointed quite unforeseen figures to the defense sector, mostly from other structures of the state administration, and installed Putin’s niece Anna Tsivileva, a privileged member of the defense class, as secretary general of the ministry. the great Russian oligarchs. Since 2023, Tsivileva has also headed the “Defenders of the Fatherland” foundation, created on the instructions of her uncle, Tsar Putin, to support those participating in the special military operation in Ukraine.
Since last June, Belousov began to appear in military uniform at meetings of the Security Committee, with an affected resemblance to that of generals, and the Kremlin has had to clarify that “the civilian rank of the first-level state councilor is equivalent to that of Army generals.” One of the paradoxes of the war is that several members of the minister’s family live in kyiv, where his uncle, General of the Ukrainian Army Alexander Belousov, is buried. There is no communication between Russian and Ukrainian relatives, except for the bombs that Russia continues to drop on the homes of the relatives of its Defense Minister. On the other hand, the chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army, Aleksandr Syrsky, also has all his relatives in Russia, in the city of Vladimir, which until now has not been touched by Ukrainian bombs. Apparently the Russian Ministry of Defense is preparing a plan for the subdivision of the territories of Ukraine between now and 2045, with one part Russian, another pro-Russian and another “undefined.”
Now the Moscow Duma has approved the budget for the years 2025-2027, further increasing war expenses, which already exceed 40% (more than 120 billion dollars), and, above all, doubling the funds allocated to Tsivileva’s “Defenders of the Fatherland”, to cover all the needs of soldiers at the front and their families, and also of veterans returning home to become the new leaders of the country, who They must be trained to occupy management positions in regional and federal administrations. It doesn’t matter that food prices rise by 20%, municipal services by 10% and gasoline by 5%; or increase tax levies on the profits of small and medium-sized businesses, gas, oil and coal extraction, alcoholic beverages, cigarettes and sugary drinks.
A third of Russia’s entire budget still depends on the export of gas and oil, if they sell the latter for at least 70 dollars a barrel, which will be increasingly difficult due to the increase in oil production in other countries, which will bring the price down to $40. The war is becoming more and more expensive for Russia, with rampant inflation that forces all interest rates and cost of living parameters to rise, and it would seem logical to find a solution to stop this mad race towards the self-destruction of the economy and society. But Russia has never been able to stop, stop or turn back in the unlimited spaces of the tajga to reach a non-existent border. He will move forward, one way or another, Trump or no Trump, to find his Ukraine, even at the cost of losing his soul.
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