War in Europe Ukraine disconnects from Russian Christmas
War in Europe Heroism and death of soldier Evgeni Kiktenko
On Christmas Eve, over the liberated city of Kherson, some clueless thought that fireworks were being launched because the sky lit up with whitish spheres that fell slowly, as if they were lit sparklers.
It was a phosphorous incendiary round dropped by the Russians from across the river, a weapon prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
It was the particular
Christmas greeting from the Kremlin
to those who, according to its propaganda, are its citizens.
There is no peace for Ukraine on the horizon
.
Vladimir Putin, the father of this invasion, once again pronounced this three-letter word as if it were his greatest aspiration after bombing (and killing) seven civilians in Kherson and after clarifying that, in reality, he wants peace as long as it is
"in conditions in Russia"
.
As he was saying this, all of Ukraine was in shelters for another alert for ballistic missile and drone attacks from Russia.
"We are ready to negotiate with all those involved on acceptable solutions, but that depends on them, it is
not us who refuse to negotiate, it is them
," Putin told Rossiya 1 state television. The problem for Putin, after assuring that it would never go to war with Ukraine just days before invading it, that it would not mobilize civilian reservists, that the Ukrainians themselves were guilty of Bucha's crimes and after pursuing the truth in such basic issues as euphemistically calling "Military Operation Special" to the worst conflict unleashed since World War II,
is that no one believes him outside his circle anymore
.
The reality of the facts is that Putin has not taken any steps towards peace, but towards escalation.
The bombardment of civilian targets in Ukrainian cities, which is intended to make them uninhabitable this winter, is the latest such evidence that Russia is increasingly implicated in the conflict.
"
The Kremlin says that it will fight until it achieves all its goals
," said the dictator in the same interview, making two absolutely contradictory messages compatible, pure Putin.
CIA Director William Burns said that while most conflicts end in negotiation, the CIA's assessment ensures that Russia is not yet serious about actual negotiation to end the war.
Nor do they believe it in kyiv, fed up with lies and broken promises.
Zelensky's message was clear: "
We will not rest until all Russian soldiers are expelled from all of our territory, including Crimea
."
Correct address
Putin said Russia was acting in the "right direction" in Ukraine because the West, led by the United States,
was trying to divide Russia
, a suspicion never proven by the Russian leader, whose mutant "casus belli" rhetoric has swept the nation. NATO's proximity to Russian territory, the denazification of Ukraine (
of whose previous Nazification we have no news except in its propaganda
), the alleged persecution of Russian-speakers, something easily removable, the fight against the decadent West (approving laws to persecute homosexuals) even going through demonization, whatever that means.
All this, not to mention his imperial dreams in which a democratic Ukraine close to Europe collides
with his vision of the "Russian world"
as a guarantor of Christian values and his supremacy over the rest of the Slavic peoples.
"We are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people. And we have no choice but to protect our citizens," Putin said.
As if Ukraine had even threatened any Russian citizen
.
Asked if the geopolitical conflict with the West was approaching a dangerous level, Putin said: "I don't think it's that dangerous."
A few weeks ago, the same leader spoke of the tangible abyss of a nuclear conflict.
Which one to believe?
The
Wall Street Journal
published a report this week with at least two disturbing (and also contradictory) issues revealed by internal Kremlin sources.
The first is that Putin, implicated in the development of the war to the marrow, personally called on the commander of the garrison occupying Liman
not to surrender while the Ukrainians stormed the city
.
The second is that the Russian dictator only receives sweetened news from his generals, which means that he lives in a fluffy reality to camouflage the disaster that his army has been suffering since February 24 against a theoretically much inferior rival.
It is not that Ukraine does not want peace,
it is that it does not want peace at any price
after having seen how another country razes a part of its territory.
Giving Russia what it asks for is validating and rewarding its fire and blood invasion strategy.
Many analysts say that sooner or later it
is necessary to work on a strategy to de-escalate and exit the conflict
, but on realistic possibilities that Moscow has not yet shown.
These days there are several proofs of this: in the city of Bakhmut, after five months of failed attempts, Wagner's Russian mercenaries are rejected daily, leaving the battlefield full of dead soldiers.
In Kremina, a little further north,
the Ukrainians are trying to complete an encirclement that would bring them very close to Sverodonetsk
, a city for which the Russians fought for months.
In the south, the occupiers are subjected to remote bombardments that further degrade their defense capabilities.
Putin's ego aims much higher than the poor performance of his soldiers, unmotivated and outmatched in Ukraine, the degradation of his country's international image, the gradual decline of its economy, which is increasingly feeling the bombshell effect of time of sanctions, and the massive arrival of pine coffins to all corners of Russia.
For many experts, that situation is the one that must be made to understand in order to sit down and negotiate a realistic peace,
because there may be no turning back.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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