HONG KONG (Realist English). Russia has a good excuse for dismembering Ukraine. Alex Lo, a columnist for the Hong Kong South China Morning Post (SCMP), writes about this.
“Dismembering Ukraine and permanently severing its eastern parts is already pretty much a done deal. Russia has a good excuse because it has all along claimed that giving the eastern population autonomy or independence — or at least a choice at it — is the goal of the two Minsk peace accords, which the Russians have accused Kyiv of undermining. They may yet be able to secure from President Volodymyr Zelensky a neutrality guarantee from Nato, which they will then try to use as a blueprint for other countries in the Baltic and Nordic.” — points out Lo
According to him, “Beijing has neither the power nor incentive to stop the Russian offensive in Ukraine. Its best option is to stay neutral without adding fuel to the fire like the West does by supplying arms and encouraging partisan warfare that will surely turn the country into another Syria… To think Chinese suasion or Western sanctions, however tough or unprecedented, will stop [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is ridiculous. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, that is, for the West to refuse committing troops and yet expect Putin to stop.”
Lo suggests that “American voters facing rising food and fuel costs may sooner give up on [President] Joe Biden than Russians on Putin, who, after all, doesn’t need to face an angry electorate.”
The SCMP’s analyst believes that “Moscow can’t, nor does it want to take over and occupy the whole of Ukraine. At this point, a regime change in Kyiv is probably out of the question. Many Westerners seem happy to encourage Ukrainians to take up partisan warfare against the Russians. Of course, that just means turning the country into another Iraq or Syria.”
On the morning of February 24, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin announced the start of a special military operation of the Russian Military Forces in the Ukraine. The special operation forestalled and thwarted a large-scale offensive by the shock groups of the Armed Forces of the Ukraine on the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republic, which are not controlled by the Kiev regime, in March of this year.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 111 Ukrainian aircraft, 68 helicopters, 160 unmanned aerial vehicles, 159 anti-aircraft missile systems, 1,353 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 129 multiple rocket launchers, 493 field artillery and mortar guns, as well as 1,096 units of special military vehicles have been destroyed.
