Putin is terrorizing Ukraine

The courage of the Russian aggressors was so great that they even destroyed an entire street in their own village, but I think it didn't cause any special emotions, because if they need to achieve some goals, Russians are ready to bomb and shell their own territory - we know this very well.

Now Russian propagandists will say that Putin is actually taking revenge on Ukrainians for Belgorod, but the question arises: what was the revenge for all the other malicious attacks by the Russian Federation, what was Putin taking revenge for, say, on 24 February 2022, when no one even thought that Russian settlements could be under drone attack? Of course, we understand why Putin is taking revenge on Ukraine, why he is trying to destroy Ukrainian cities - revenge for the fact that Ukraine exists and Ukrainians want to fight for the sovereignty and independence of their own state; revenge for the fact that the delusions of Vladimir Putin, who was sure that he would destroy the state he hated in just a few days and create conditions for the accession of most of its territory to the Russian Federation, are not justified; revenge for the fact that Putin's and other Chekists' delusions about creating an empire, which, like in Soviet times, would again threaten the entire civilized world within the new borders of the Soviet Union, were not justified.

In fact, Ukrainians have stopped the implementation of a large-scale geopolitical plan of the Russian leadership aimed at destroying the statehood of not only Ukraine but also the former Soviet republics, and returning Russia, as Moscow says, to the borders of the Soviet Union of 1991.

Putin is taking revenge on Ukraine for slowing down the implementation of this man-hating plan, and so we can understand what his intentions are: if possible, destroy as much of Ukraine's territory as possible, gradually turning it into an infrastructural desert; make sure that as many Ukrainians as possible die in the war with the Russian army. To achieve this, Putin is mobilizing more and more of his own countrymen for this bloody war, and it is necessary to create conditions for more and more Ukrainians to leave the borders of their own country. Thus, freeing up space for citizens of the Russian Federation who will be resettled in the "cleared of the enemy" lands after the Russian army eventually occupies the whole of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin's plan to annex our territories to Russia is implemented.

Yes, these are the goals of Putin's war of attrition, which has replaced the blitzkrieg plan of the Russian president and his associates - after one fiasco, Putin obviously wants to suffer another, but a much more extended one. Unlike the blitzkrieg, which lasted only a few weeks, we understand that a war of attrition is a war for years, and in order for it not to end in disaster for Ukraine, it must be a mutual war of attrition. That is, the Russian Federation itself, its human, economic, military resources, and its ability to strike at Ukraine.

So we should not be thinking about how to calm down Russian President Vladimir Putin. Because it will not be possible to calm him down - he is already absolutely calm, cool and continues to implement his plans to destroy the state he hates. We need to think about how to strengthen our own air defense systems, realizing that such attacks will be a daily occurrence in Ukrainian cities, perhaps for many years of a war of attrition.

The less Vladimir Putin will be able to hit targets and terrorise Ukrainian citizens with his UAVs and drones supplied by Iran and other terrorist countries, the sooner Russia will realize that a war of attrition leads to rather unpleasant results for Russia itself.

Of course, we need to create conditions for our own missile production and for the production of our own drones. As I said, the war of attrition must be mutual. We have to witness how drones attack military targets in the cities of the Russian Federation itself, how the aggressor's infrastructure is being destroyed, how Russian citizens are realizing the danger of this war for them, because to date, the war has not come to Russian territory. We can see that only in the regions of the Russian Federation bordering Ukraine, such as Belgorod, we can now talk about certain consequences of the war, but Russia is a state that is essentially focused on Moscow, the welfare of the Russian capital, and this will mean that Vladimir Putin can continue the war of attrition against Ukraine as long as he wants, that the vast majority of Russian citizens will believe that this war does not concern them and that they cannot influence the decisions of their own government, even if they consider it necessary to end the military conflict. 

Only a change of mood in the capital, the destabilization of the regime itself, whenever it occurs, will create certain conditions for a political solution to the crisis that began not in 2022 or 2014, but in 1991, after Ukraine's independence, when Moscow decided that sooner or later it would return the former Soviet republics to its so-called home harbour.

Russia must give up these ambitions once and for all, whenever it happens, and only then will we consider the independence of Ukraine, as well as other former Soviet republics, a fait accompli of world history. Until then, our statehood and security have been and will continue to be under the eternal threat of attack by the former metropolis. The majority of its citizens are confident in the justice of its imperialist and chauvinistic ambitions.

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About the author. Vitaliy Portnikov, journalist, winner of the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine

The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.