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The West can do little to assist Ukraine’s ambitions to invade Crimea and Donbass.
Written by Paul Antonopoulos, independent geopolitical analyst
Recently, Kiev and their Western allies have propagated allegations that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine with over 175,000 troops. Evgeny Buzhinsky, a retired Russian Lieutenant-General and Chairman of the PIR Center, noted that “the current aggravation of the situation on the border of Ukraine and Russia may result in an armed conflict, this cannot be ruled out. But still there are no prerequisites for this. It will only happen if Ukraine decides to resolve the issue with the LPR (Luhansk People’s Republic) and the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) by force.”
At the same time, the retired lieutenant-general believes that “conflict can be avoided,” but that there are only two options for this to develop.
“On the one hand, I do not see a diplomatic solution because Ukraine cannot fulfill the Minsk agreements due to its internal reasons. But it can be a frozen type conflict like Transnistria, with the gradual integration of the LPR and DPR into Russia,” he said.
The PIR Center chief explained that the second option, if Ukraine decides on it, “will be a local war. I see no other options because there will be no nuclear conflict between the US and Russia.” He added that if “Ukraine tramples on Donbass, where there are 600,000 Russian citizens, it is natural that Russia will intervene. Any sane leadership will not come to power [in Kiev], nor will the internal political situation change there, which is doubtful in the foreseeable future.”
In turn, retired Colonel Oleksandr Zhilin, now the head of the Center for the Study of Public Applied Problems of National Security, believes that “the current situation suggests that a war between Ukraine and Russia is possible only if those planning this conflict decide that it is time to take actions that will threaten the statehood of both Russia and Ukraine. Everything else is of secondary importance.”
The retired Colonel explained that Moscow at any moment can radically solve the Donbass crisis. However, he also stressed his belief that Russia’s military and political leaders do not even consider the possibility of sending tens of thousands of troops to seize Ukrainian territory.
“It will be a catastrophe of a humanitarian nature; the peoples of Ukraine and Russia will clash their heads in a civil war. There will be sabotage and terrorist acts,” he said when citing the head of the Russian Federal Security Service after he revealed that 106 people from Ukraine were detained as they were ready to start terrorist attacks against Russia.
According to the expert, with regard to the further development of the situation, “the United States will try to maintain tensions in Donbass” as they want to maintain a permanent state of conflict on Russia’s border.
In this way, the US is actually turning Ukraine into a weapon aimed against Russia in order to ensure that pressure is maintained against its adversary. Besides giving Ukraine tokenistic rhetorical support and limited material aid, Western media and the information apparatus is maintaining a policy of Russophobia. They will keep Ukraine close in order to maintain pressure against Russia in its own traditional sphere of influence.
Despite this though, Kiev is becoming increasingly frustrated by the limited material support it is receiving from NATO, with Ukrainian General Kirill Budanov complaining that “[The West needs] to decide, either we’re allies as they declare — and in that case allies help one another — or they need to say that this is not exactly the case.”
As a US expert recently said, “If Russia really wants to unleash its conventional capabilities, they could inflict massive damage in a very short period of time. They can devastate the Ukrainian military in the east really quickly, within the first 30-40 minutes.”
Although Washington wants an emboldened and empowered Ukraine to try and contain Russian influence in Eastern Europe, they too begrudgingly and quietly accept that there is little they can do to achieve this. This is a reality that Washington’s most ardent European proxies, Poland and the Baltic States, are yet to accept as they remain blinded by Russophobia. However, as Western countries admit there is little they can do to support Ukraine’s efforts to invade Crimea and the Donbass republic’s, they can only limit their pressure campaign in the information sphere and with limited material support.
