Photo: Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
Vladimir Putin told Joseph Biden that Russia "has nowhere else to retreat", that it "cannot tolerate" that missiles are placed in Ukraine that can detonate in Moscow in ten minutes, and that Russia will respond to all "hostile" moves. adequately" to answer. If there really is a military intervention of Russia in Donbass, the question of interpretation will be whether it "attacked" Ukraine, or "defends the Russian population from aggression." Behind the clanking of arms on the issue of Ukraine, however, there is something else that is subject to negotiations
Will Putin attack Ukraine? Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists to look for the answer to that question, which has been on the headlines for weeks, in Yevtushenko's song, once sung by Nicholas Burns, "Do the Russians want war?" in which the hearer is directed to ask the soldiers lying under the birches, and that their sons will give him the answer. In other words, Lavrov's message is: Russians do not want war, but they are raising their voice.
Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu said at the expanded collegium of the Ministry of Defense on December 21 that NATO is rehearsing various options for using coalition armies against Russia. The non-aligned states of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine also take part in these military exercises.
Shoigu claims that the United States of America and its allies are supplying Ukraine with helicopters, unmanned combat aircraft, anti-tank guided missiles, and that the presence of more than 120 American private military mercenaries who equip combat positions, prepare Ukrainian special operations forces and radical armed groups for hostile actions.
Shoigu further states that unidentified chemical components were delivered to the cities of Avdeyevka and Krasni Liman, and that the number of attacks by Ukrainian soldiers on peaceful areas of the Donbass and the positions of the People's Militia of the People's Republic of Ukraine and the People's Republic of China "does not decrease", all with the aim of "provoking" Russia. .
At the traditional press conference on December 23 in Moscow's Manezh, the President of Russia Vladimir Putin presented an assessment to the 500 journalists present that Kyiv might be preparing a new military operation against the Donbass, which the Ukrainian authorities have so far done twice tried unsuccessfully.
"Now they tell us: war, war, war." One gets the impression that maybe a third military operation is being prepared, and we have been warned in advance not to interfere, not to protect those people (Russians in Donbass), and if we intervene and defend them - such and such new sanctions will follow," he said. Putin repeated that Russia "should" react to such actions.
It should be recalled that in 2008, Russia intervened militarily in Georgia after the then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili tried to militarily subjugate South Ossetia, and Georgian soldiers shot at Russian soldiers on the dividing line.
Putin told the West that Russia "has nowhere left to give in", because "it was not the one that placed missiles near the American borders in Canada and Mexico, but rather the other way around", that NATO deployed American global missile defense systems (Mk 41 launchers) in Romania adapted for use, tomahawk cruise missiles, strike systems) and that the same is now being planned in Poland.
If this continues, Putin warns, if US and NATO missile systems appear in Ukraine, "then their flight time to Moscow will be reduced to 7 to 10 minutes, and with the deployment of hypersonic weapons to only five minutes."
Shoigu previously assessed that the number of flights of the US and NATO strategic aviation, which often simulates the launch of nuclear missiles at Russian facilities, has more than doubled near the Russian borders.
Putin further stated during the press conference: "Do they think that we do not see these threats? Or do they think that we will look at the threats directed at Russia with folded hands? We simply have nowhere to go - that's the whole problem. In the event that our Western colleagues remain on that clearly aggressive line, we will take adequate, retaliatory military-technical measures and react strongly to all hostile steps."
What "adequate retaliatory military-technical measures" could consist of, Putin did not clarify.
Despite the harsh words from both sides and Biden's statements about "rejecting the Russian ultimatum", there are indications that negotiations on the Russian drafts of the Agreement on Security Guarantees, which Russia sent to Brussels and Washington on December 17, have already begun: the security advisers of the American and Russian presidents ( Jake Sullivan and Yuri Ushakov) are in contact, communicate with each other and the Russian and American generals, who managed to avoid dangerous close encounters in the war theater in Syria.
And Putin notes that there are some signals that the "Western partners" are ready to work on defining the security guarantees that Moscow is looking for, but warns: "There is also a danger of trying to chatter, of putting all our proposals into a quagmire and that they , using this break, they do what they want... To make it clear to everyone: such a development of events, of course, will not suit us".
MM
TASS/RIAN/Rossijskaja gazeta/Izvestija
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