DO THE RUSSIANS WANT WAR WITH UKRAINE? AND IF NOT THE RUSSIANS, WHO AND WHY ?
Speaking to MPs on Friday 3 December, Ukrainian Defence Minister Alexey Reznikov said that Russia will start a war with Ukraine at the end of January. Ukraina.ru investigated whether the Russians “want war” and, if not, who does and why.
To begin with, it would be more correct to say “the Russian government”, but you can’t change the words of a song. The answer to this question from the famous post-war song is more relevant than ever. And it has at least two answers. In Russia, they say: no, they don’t want to. In Ukraine and the West, they say the opposite: Russia is concentrating troops on the border with Ukraine to attack the neighbouring state.
Of course, in Russia, there are hotheads among the experts and politicians who think that war is inevitable and that Zelensky and his team should be “kicked in the ass” to remove once and for all “this abscess on the body of the former Russian empire”. But fortunately, extremists do dictate the agenda in Russia, unlike in Ukraine, where they sit directly in power – in the Foreign ministry, the Defence ministry and the President’s office.
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister promises coffins to Russia, the Chief of the General Staff dreams of entering Red Square in a tank, and the Ukrainian President keeps exciting the interest of the Western media and politicians with “Russian aggression”, which he sees in the movement of Russian troops along the Ukrainian borders.
What is moving here and there in Russia is a separate issue, and we will talk about that in due course. What is interesting now is something else. Let’s ask the question not whether there will be a war, but why?
Why would the Russians go to war with Ukraine?
The axiom that such a war would be won by Russia does not seem to be disputed by anyone in the West or even in Ukraine.
It is true that a little-known “retired colonel” said the other day that after the first salvo, “the Russian Ivan” would scurry like hares. We will leave this statement to his conscience, if he has one, of course. Let us simply recall that Russia won the Chechnya campaign despite a poor start, that it is operating successfully in Syria and that, unlike the Ukrainian army, it is well armed, well trained and constantly on the alert, which distinguishes the Russian army from the Soviet army, as Russian army units regularly take part in exercises, which in peacetime is one of the main conditions for preparation for combat operations. Therefore, Russia’s victory, should such a war take place, is an indisputable fact.
But what happens after such a victory is a more interesting question. Or rather: why would Russia want to conquer Ukraine?
Let’s try to examine all the more or less known arguments that are mainly stated by the so-called Ukrainian experts.
Four reasons and only one real motive
1. Russia wants to conquer Ukraine because without Kiev, which was the spiritual centre of the Russian Empire, Russia cannot be a full-fledged empire in its current state, Ukrainian couch strategists argue.
This argument is false for two reasons. Since Russia became an empire (under Peter the Great), Kiev has never been the spiritual centre, or rather, was one of those centres. But the main centres of the Empire were Moscow and St Petersburg, where Gogol and Bulgakov, Shevchenko and Korolev came and became spiritual leaders or great scientists.
Today, Kiev is the centre of anti-Russianism, the main ideology of the Ukrainian state. Therefore, conquering it in order to obtain an anti-Russian Ukraine (spiritually and culturally) as part of Russia, is in this sense, at least, stupid and, from a practical point of view, inappropriate. It is clear that all these Podolyak, Arestovich, Nitsoy and Farion will go nowhere, but will crab in secret and in the open, counting on Western support and subsidies. Kiev has long since ceased to be the centre of Russian ideology, but rather the centre of anti-Russian ideology. Who needs it in this form?
2. The other argument of the couch strategists is even funnier. They say that Russia will attack Ukraine to conquer it in order to speed up the commissioning of Nord Stream 2 and, more generally, to avenge the gas war that Ukraine has been waging perpetually against Russia for the past thirty years.
First of all, if Russia really wanted to “avenge” the gas wars or, better still, if it wanted to take over the pipeline, which Ukraine has been praying about for 30 years, it should have done so 7 to 10 years ago. Today, when Nord Stream 2 has been built, the revenge itself is meaningless (it is, in fact, incorporated into Nord Stream 2) and nobody, except Ukraine itself, needs this pipeline.
But a war with Ukraine, if started by Russia, could precisely put an end to the operation of Nord Stream 2 as the main Western sanction in response to “Russian aggression”. In this sense, on the contrary, Ukraine is interested in a Russian-Ukrainian war, as it would bring the Ukrainian gas pipeline back to the original state it had requested.
To put it bluntly: Russia is certainly not interested in a war with Ukraine over the pipeline, because as a result of such a war it could lose its brand new, unused Nord Stream 2.
3. Another argument often made in the Ukrainian media and social networks is that Russia wants Ukraine because it needs its resources. Well, the question here is, first of all, what resources are we talking about?
Migrants, that is, human resources – there are already 2 to 3.5 million people from Ukraine in Russia according to various estimates, many of whom have already received citizenship. And if such resources are needed in the future, there is nothing to prevent Russia from attracting them without war.
If you mean agriculture, the famous Ukrainian chernozems, which produce rich crops of wheat, sunflowers, squash, vegetables, excellent cattle breeding, etc., then you are right. No, all this is true or almost true (except for cattle breeding, which is currently in decline), but why would Russia need it?
Over the past 10-12 years, Russia has imperceptibly become one of the most successful agricultural nations in the world, not only completely self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs, but also supplying world markets with wheat and a few other crops. And Ukraine has no other resources that do not exist in Russia. There are dozens of times more forests and woods in Russia than in Ukraine. Not to mention gas and oil, because Ukraine does not have such resources compared to Russia. Russia has iron ore and also exports it in much larger quantities than Ukraine.
What remains in this section is Ukrainian industry, once one of the most advanced in Europe. Yes, 30 years ago Ukraine was a space power, with its factories in the aeronautics and automobile industry, in Nikolayev there were the largest military and civil shipbuilding companies, in Lvov – television sets and buses were produced, in Kharkov – turbines for hydroelectric power stations and tanks, and so on.
But the problem for Ukraine is that this is largely a thing of the past. The space industry, avionics and shipbuilding are almost totally destroyed, the car industry is destroyed and aviation can barely breathe. How and why this happened is a separate question, and we have written about it several times.
One thing is clear: Ukraine, as an industrial power that creates not slabs for the West, but value-added products, i.e. ships, planes and tanks, is practically non-existent and in this sense, after 30 years of independence, is of no interest not only to Russia, but also to the West.
Moreover, if a war ends in a Russian victory, the victorious country will have to pay back Ukraine’s debts ($70-80 billion), and if everything that was stolen, looted and cut up for scrap is to be returned, at least $200-300 billion, which Russia, like the West, does not have, according to Ukrainian economists’ calculations.
4. There is one last reason that could become the basis for a war between Russia and Ukraine – an attempt by Ukraine to retake the Donbassby force. That is, to put it simply, the transition from the lethargic civil conflict in the east to an active phase, i.e. the beginning of active actions by the Ukrainian armed forces against the civilian population with the use of heavy equipment, Bayraktars, tanks and Grads.
Start and lose quickly
In this case, Russia will of course be forced to enter into a military conflict with Ukraine in order to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in the Donbass, where about half a million of its citizens already live.
But what is important here is not only the consequence of such action, but also the reason for it. For Russia to go to war with Ukraine, Ukraine must take military action against civilians. There is no other reason to start a war that would force Russia to enter it.
Understanding all the negative consequences of such a development (Western sanctions, isolation of Russia, collapse of the Nord Steam 2 project), the Russian leadership will not allow Russia to go to war, even following the usual provocations by Ukrainian military units. The war on the part of Ukraine must then begin in earnest, with a mass extermination of the population. This is the only way to force Russia to use its armed forces to defend the Donbass.
This is well understood in Ukraine, in Bankova and Groushevsky, where the presidential cabinet and the government of the country are located. So when Ukrainian Defence Minister Alexey Reznikov told the Verkhovna Rada on Friday 3 December that Russia will start a war with Ukraine at the end of January, he apparently means that at the end of January the Ukrainian army expects to launch an operation to retake the Donbass by force.
The Ukrainian authorities are well aware of all this inherently monstrous reasoning that we have cited above. That is why they plan to somehow arrange, by turning the civil conflict into a hot one, to receive quickly (preferably within the first few hours) international diplomatic and military support from the West, otherwise a shameful defeat awaits their armed forces, followed by the refusal of the victor to support the vanquished, i.e. even greater ruin and impoverishment of the country with an unpredictable uprising of the people against the government and possible fragmentation of the state.
And this, it seems to us, is the most urgent task of the Ukrainian authorities: how to obtain guarantees of support from the West in case Ukraine itself, violating all its international obligations, including the Minsk agreements, starts a war in the Donbass, as a result of which the civil conflict turns into a Russian-Ukrainian war of extermination.
This ulterior motive of the Ukrainian government, which wants to impose guarantees of its protection on the West, is well understood by Western politicians. Hence the exhortations of Victoria Nuland, and some other lesser-known Western politicians, to the Ukrainian leaders to negotiate with Russia, to establish a dialogue.
The problem is that the Ukrainian authorities, as a result of their own mistakes and incompetence, are in such a political (foreign and domestic policy) and economic state that the only way to solve all or almost all the problems of the state, which is in a historical deadlock, is to wage a short-term war, even if it is lost, for which the West will blame Russia and once again give money to Ukraine to eliminate the consequences of the war. The main thing for the Ukrainian authorities is that such a war is short-lived and limited to the Donbass.
The next two months will show whether Zelensky and his entourage can overcome this temptation for a “quick fix”.
Zakhar Vinogadov
Source: Ukraina.ru
Translation by Donbass Insider
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