Russia's war against Ukraine has crossed the eighty-day mark.
It would seem that eighty days is not eighty years.
For comparison, the Battle of Stalingrad alone lasted twice as long as the entire Russian-Ukrainian war as of today.
But in a relatively short period of time, the goals of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have already changed several times.
Let's remember what goals were publicly announced by the Russian president on the first day of the campaign.
And we will correlate them with those intermediate results that have been achieved so far.
We will approach the topic of today's video a little from afar.
On May 14, on Vladimir Solovyov's Vkontakte channel, a very interesting conversation took place with the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov.
Let's watch a small fragment from there at the very beginning of today's video.
The remark of the diplomat that interests us lasts a little more than a minute, but it contains such a concentration of meanings that it can be discussed for at least an hour.
Let's watch. I know that you don't like such one minute long insertions, but this one is important.
Americans are generally pushing us towards negotiations from all sides. But!
Only under certain circumstances.
I would name three such conditions: firstly, to stop all the military actions within the special military operation.
Secondly, pull back our troops behind the line of before the February 24th this year.
And thirdly, repent for everything we've done.
Obviously we firmly and clearly state, and we are completely sure about it, at least the Russian diplomats that work here, such surrender will not be, will never happen.
We are firmly sure, and it would be harder to work for us if we we're sure, we are firmly sure that all the goals set
by the commander in chief before our armed forces, those goals will be achieved.
We will never surrender, will never retreat.
And the goals that were not clear in the beginning, are now clear and very clearly explained by the Ministry of Defense,
and also thanks to your reports, thanks to colleagues on other TV channels.
Surprisingly, the Russian diplomat clearly and competently listed all the actions that need to be taken in order for our country to avoid inevitable collapse.
At the same time, he raised an important question about the goals of the so-called “special military operation” against Ukraine.
Firstly, the Russian ambassador to the United States spoke about the immediate cessation of senseless hostilities, in which the best soldiers of the Russian army are now dying for no reason.
And regular military personnel, who took years of training.
And modern military equipment, which Russia produced in small batches and therefore was forced to collect those over the years.
All this is being multiplied to zero right now, literally in a matter of weeks, and this needs to end as soon as possible.
Secondly, the ambassador mentioned the withdrawal of Russian troops to positions as of February 23 this year.
Another reasonable and necessary action.
Because if the Russian army does not retreat on its own, then sooner or later it will be driven away anyway.
And it is not clear yet to where it will be driven away – after all the losses it has suffered.
It is better to withdraw on their own, as soon as possible, and avoiding those victims that can still be avoided.
Thirdly, Anatoly Antonov spoke about repentance.
A month ago, I had a video on my channel in which this difficult topic was raised.
We then said that the Ukrainians would not care too much for our apologies.
And we said that repentance in front of Ukraine is necessary for Russia itself, and this is necessary for its own healing.
And the sooner our society and state begin this treatment, the healthier and stronger they will become in the future.
In general, Ambassador Antonov on the air, competently and without hesitation, outlined an excellent plan to save our country.
The only problem is that he called this plan «surrender».
And here another interesting topic begins.
«There will be no surrender!» «We will never give up!» «We're not going back!»
Such remarks are, to put it mildly, not the rhetoric of a winner.
The side that wins the war does not need to declare «nicht kapitulieren».
Anatoly Antonov's remarks are like affirmations.
These are the words of the insecure side that needs to cheer itself up.
They resemble a huge banner, which was seen in Nizhny Novgorod back in March:
“Compatriots! Don't be discouraged! Russia has always won and will win now!”
Well, the cherry on the cake. I will now quote the Ambassador briefly.
“The goals and objectives of the special operation, set by the supreme commander in chief, were initially incomprehensible. But we firmly believe that they will be fully implemented.”
Well, then let's talk about the goals of the war set by the «supreme commander» and how they are implemented.
The speeches of both Russian propagandists and Russian officials have one inalienable property.
They need to be allowed to tincture.
It is quite possible that in a few months the interview of Ambassador Anatoly Antonov
will also sparkle with new colors,
and it will be interesting to recall it after the fact.
Russian officialdom – from the speeches of Margarita Simonyan to the addresses of Vladimir Putin –
has a huge self-revealing power.
When they talk about certain «enemies of Russia», it often turns out that they are actually talking about themselves.
And when they talk about the threats that, they say, hang over our state,
it turns out that they themselves create these threats.
Both propagandists and responsible decision-makers in Russia first invent imaginary problems,
and then do everything to make them real.
When they lie, their lies often don't even need to be refuted!
It is enough to wait a little, and then remember what they said just recently.
Let's just watch three episodes:
You insist that we are going to invade Ukraine even though we explained that it is not the case several times.
Russian army is fighting, as was expected, not against the regular armed forces of Ukraine, but with nationalist formations, that are,
as known, directly responsible for the genocide in Donbass and the blood of civilians of the People's Republics.
There are no losses among the crew members of the cruiser "Moskva". All sailors were evacuated in time.
One doesn't even refute this right now, this is how ridiculous it looks after just couple of months after it was stated.
I will quote Mr. Ambassador Antonov again:
“The Russian side is not undertaking or planning an invasion of Ukraine.
We are not trying to take possession of any territory of any country.
I would like to confirm that Donbass and Luhansk are part of Ukraine.”
The publication with the words of Anatoly Antonov was published in TASS on February 20.
And the next day, Vladimir Putin, in an address to the nation, announced the recognition of the independence of the so-called Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.
Ambassador is by the way a country representative. And ambassador to the USA is in general a very important diplomatic personality.
Three days later, the Russian army invaded Ukraine and the war began.
You want decommunization?
Well, we are absolutely fine with it.
But do not stop halfway, we are ready to show what the real decommunization means to Ukraine.
In an address dated February 24, Vladimir Putin announced the following goals for the so-called «special military operation».
There were five of them.
Denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine. Preventing NATO infrastructure from approaching Russia's borders.
Protection of the inhabitants of Donbass.
And, finally, bringing to justice some unnamed villains who (quote) «committed numerous bloody crimes against civilians»
We have said many times on our channel that the goals of any military campaign, if it has already been decided to start,
should be extremely specific, finite, measurable and, in principle, achievable by military means.
The goals of the war are not the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and not the songs of Viktor Tsoi, they should not give rise to a plurality of interpretations and versions.
They should be unambiguous and fit on half an A4 sheet.
In addition, the one who started the war must understand with what forces and means he is going to achieve his goals.
And in what terms.
Finally, he must keep before his eyes the desired post-war picture.
And no matter how cynical it may sound, wars are started in order to improve, not worsen, the situation of their country compared to the pre-war period.
Although in the 21st century this is not particularly possible
This is exactly why in 21t century there are no wars between the big states.
All of the above are basic truths.
But history has shown that even the alphabet needs to be repeated.
Otherwise – «good morning Vietnam!», «hello Afghanistan!»
and “Long live the democratization of the Middle East and the denazification of Ukraine!”
In general, we are at war, and even the Russian ambassador to the United States is not very successful in finding out what the goals are.
But we will still try to understand the goals set and what came of them.
Let's start with denazification.
Such a goal of the war (as, indeed, all of the above) obviously does not fit the criteria voiced,
which should be the goals of any military campaign.
But the main thing is that Ukraine could not be denazified by definition, because it is not a Nazi state.
It is enough to open Wikipedia to find out who controls today's Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is neither a Nazi nor a nationalist.
There is not a single Nazi or nationalist in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
There are eight liberals, fourteen non-partisans and one social democrat.
And in 2019, for four months, both the president and the prime minister of Ukraine were simultaneously two ethnic Jews –
Volodymyr Zelensky and Volodymyr Groisman.
Recently it has become common to say that the “Nazism” of Ukraine is not directed against the Jews, but against the Russians.
Let's continue to study secret knowledge from Wikipedia.
Maybe the Nazis sit in the parliament – the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine?
There are no Nazis there.
But on the other hand, among the four hundred and fifty deputies there is only one nationalist from the right-wing radical Svoboda party, headed by Oleg Tyagnibok.
On March 18 of this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave an interview to Russia Today,
where he paid much attention to Ukrainian nationalist Dmitry Yarosh,
who won as much as seven-tenths of a percent of the vote in the penultimate presidential election in Ukraine.
And then Lavrov specifically focused on this Oleg Tyagnibok,
whose nationalist party Svoboda has as much as two-tenths of a percent of the seats in the Ukrainian parliament.
Everything is great here.
First, if the words of politicians with electoral support of less than one percent can be used as a justification for the denazification of a foreign country,
then there is not a single state on the planet that would not have to be denazified.
Secondly, the only time when the right-wing radical party «Svoboda» was able to achieve significant success
was under the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych.
Then it received not zero point two tenths, but as much as ten percent of the seats in the Verkhovna Rada.
According to this logic, Viktor Yanukovych's Ukraine should have been denazified, not Volodymyr Zelensky's.
Thirdly, and most importantly, by starting the war, the Putin regime was able to achieve the very dreams of Oleg Tyagnibok, which he himself could never have achieved.
Putin conceived the denazification of Ukraine. But he got the exact de-Russification.
On the eve of Russia's attack on Ukraine, the second largest party in the Verkhovna Rada was the openly pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life, led by Yuriy Boyko, Vadim Rabinovich
and Putin's godfather Viktor Medvedchuk.
Interesting look of Nazism in Ukraine:
the second party in terms of the number of deputies was headed by Rabinovich and a relative of the Russian president.
But now that's over.
A month after the invasion of the Russian army, the activities of all pro-Russian parties in Ukraine were suspended, and recently it was completely banned.
The electoral base of the former pro-Russian parties is the predominantly Russian-speaking East of Ukraine.
It is this same electorate from the East of Ukraine that has been physically destroyed by Russian shells, rockets and air bombs for the third month in a row.
It is the Russian-speaking cities of Ukraine that are either partially destroyed, like Kharkiv and Chernihiv, or completely wiped off the face of the earth, like Mariupol, Volnovakha and Popasna.
Popasna was just recently liberated by the Russian army from almost all residential buildings.
The same millions of Ukrainian citizens who spoke Russian and traditionally voted for pro-Russian politicians
are freed from housing, property, health, relatives and friends, as well as from past illusions about friendship with Russia.
It is symbolic that recently the monument of friendship between the peoples of Russia and Ukraine was dismantled in Kyiv.
It has stood in its place since Soviet times, no evil Nazis have raised a hand against it.
It would have stood still for decades, but Putin's denazification of Ukraine turned into a large-scale de-Russification,
which even the most inveterate Russophobe could never carry out by even three percent.
And this is understandable – when the Russians came to shoot at you from a tank,
you are unlikely to want to be friends with them, no matter what nationality you are and what your native language is.
Let's briefly go over the other war goals that we talked about quite a lot in previous videos.
By the way when we talk about the goals of the war, one could think of it as of a nonsense, say: goal is to win, what else is here to discuss?
But I believe that even for the most inveterate putinists the question of why such an amount of Russian soldiers and officers are dying,
why Russian army is destroying Ukrainian Russian-speaking cities, which looked exactly like Russian cities before the war, this question must be important.
Why are we doing all this?
Why the civilians are dying?
What are the Russian soldiers are dying for?
This is why the foals of the war are important, important to discuss them.
And so we continue discussing the goals - demilitarization of Ukraine.
After 80 days of war, tens of thousands of casualties, completely ruined Russian economy, this goal is to say the least, not fulfilled, but vice versa.
Putin's desire to demilitarize Ukraine led, on the one hand, to the militarization of this country, and on the other hand, to the demilitarization of Russia itself.
The military-industrial potential of dozens of states is now working for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
On our channel, we have often referred to military assistance to Ukraine as a “second Lend-Lease”, using this expression as a metaphor.
But now this is not a metaphor: on May 9, US President Joseph Biden signed a separate Lend-Lease Act.
Putin initiated such a militarization of Ukraine and such a large-scale rearmament of its armed forces
that no one could ever carry out in peacetime.
Under one of the latest agreements alone, Ukraine will receive weapons and equipment worth the equivalent of several of its annual defense budgets.
Such a strengthening of the army, which will happen now, would not happen for many decades.
But the Russian army is demilitarizing right now on the battlefields.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine have already won in four operational areas: near Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv.
The Russian side hastened to call its retreat from Kyiv and Chernihiv a «goodwill gesture».
It is not entirely clear here: if you are fighting against the Nazis, then what the gesture of goodwill can be towards them?
One needs to decide.
And what about Sumy and Kharkiv?
There, the Ukrainian military unambiguously dispelled the myth of the invincibility of the Russian army and felt the taste of victory.
Troops hardened in battle and inspired by victory are a formidable force.
They would never have received such hardening and such motivation, if not for the war started by Putin.
About “preventing NATO from moving eastward”, which led to the exact opposite result, I released a separate video yesterday.
Be sure to check it out, because it's not just about Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
In addition, over the past two and a half months, Vladimir Putin has done so much to strengthen the North Atlantic Alliance
that a monument should be erected to him at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
And most importantly, NATO is now not only doubling the common border with Russia, but is also becoming an openly anti-Russian bloc.
Bloomberg writes that in June the North Atlantic Treaty Organization may adopt a new strategy
in which Russia will be explicitly called a «imminent threat».
In the current version of the founding document, which is probably living its last days, our country is referred to as a «partner».
We also spoke in detail about the protection of “ours in Donbass”, but we will repeat it.
The Donbas problem itself was created by Putin in 2014.
Parts of the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions with millions of local residents were torn away from Ukraine.
They were deprived of the opportunity to live normally in Ukraine.
But they were not attached to Russia either.
They were placed under the control of bandits, adventurers, MMM (famous financial pyramid in Russia in 1990s) swindlers and all sorts of warlords who really like to fight.
Givi, Motorola, Vokha and Bes are specific people
who would better be playing strikeball,
but they got the opportunity to play war games for real due to other people's misfortunes.
The self-proclaimed DPR and LPR did not have any other reason for existence than to fight against Kyiv.
And when the war in Donbass, which began in 2014, turned into a frozen conflict,
the field commanders of the so-called “people’s republics” began to actively kill each other.
Two large Russian-speaking cities, quite successful, where only recently the semi-finals of the European Football Championship took place,
where the standard of living was about the same as in Kyiv (if we talk about Donetsk) –
they were turned by Putin into an African type of failed state,
where those who were unable to leave, lived under the leadership of crooks and bandits, without rights and opportunities.
The conflict in Donbas was frozen until February 24, 2022.
According to the data announced by the authorities of the DPR and LPR themselves, eight civilians were killed in these republics in the whole of 2021.
This is a tragedy, but certainly not genocide, as Putin likes to say.
Yes, and these eight people died through the fault of Putin himself. They could live in peace in Ukraine.
Before the war, Mariupol was getting prettier from year to year,
they were actively engaged in modern landscaping – you can watch any travel blog on YouTube.
The mass extermination of the inhabitants of Donbass began precisely at the moment when Putin, with even greater force, kindled that war, which had already cooled down in recent years.
The cities of Donbass, which remained under Ukrainian control and lived normally for the past eight years,
are now being wiped off the face of the earth.
Together with their inhabitants – both adults and children.
At the same time, in the so-called DPR and LPR,
the entire healthy male population is caught and, without preparation, sent to a real slaughterhouse.
The most pro-Putin speakers have already started talking about this.
Soon there will be no young healthy men left in the self-proclaimed republics.
They are caught right on the streets and thrown into battle without any preparation, like cannon fodder.
Only those who hide from being drafted to the front will survive, just as Jews once hid from the Nazis.
Vladimir Putin actively speculated on the term «genocide» to justify his war.
Say, his goal is to save the inhabitants of Donbass from genocide.
Already seven states on the planet, including Canada and the Czech Republic, have recognized the actions of the Russian army as «genocide of the Ukrainian people».
Seven countries directly accuse Russia of genocide! Could it ever have been imagined?
And, finally, let's mention the trials for «bloody crimes against civilians» that Vladimir Putin spoke about.
This, after all, was also the goal of the invasion voiced by him. Russia has not held a single such trial.
However, they are carried out by Ukraine.
Such trials began over Russian servicemen who were captured by Ukrainians and suspected of killing civilians.
This is how, for example, a Russian soldier looks in the Kyiv court, who is on trial for the murder of a civilian riding a bicycle.
Over the past eighty days, Russian officialdom has retroactively come up with many new goals for the war against Ukraine
and delicately forgot about those goals that have lost their relevance.
You have to compile entire tables in order to somehow systematize everything that is voiced by officials as «the true goal of the war».
Sergei Lavrov, a month and a half apart, stated that the goal was to “give Ukrainians the opportunity to choose their future”,
and to “put an end to US dominance.”
But it is not clear how the chosen means serve these ends.
In the last film of Tarkovsky, where the main character burned down his house
to save the whole world, even that makes more sense.
Dmitry Peskov turned out to be the best diplomat.
On April 7, he announced that the main goal of the special operation in Ukraine was to prevent the Third World War.
World War III is really unlikely, so Peskov has every chance of winning the competition «name the goal of the war, which will still come true».
Vladimir Putin turned out to be much less fortunate.
All the goals that he named on February 24 were fulfilled exactly the opposite way.
Despite some sarcasm at the beginning of this video, in reality, I myself do not like to compare Putin's Russia and Hitler's Germany.
If we compare our country with Germany, then it is more accurate to compare with the Kaiser's Germany.
Emperor Wilhelm II, of course, did not promise his country a victory in three days.
But he directly told the German soldiers in the summer of 1914: «The leaves will not have been fell from the trees before you return home with victory».
As a result, a protracted, bloody and senseless war, which crushed the young people on the frontline and put people in the rear on the brink of survival.
At the same time, German propaganda until the last days said that the country was winning.
Moreover, at the time of the end of the First World War, German troops were still in foreign territory, not a single enemy soldier set foot on the soil of Germany itself.
But the war was unequivocally lost, and the country could no longer pull out the confrontation with the strongest firces.
Until the last moment, German propaganda deceived the German people about the victory that was about to come.
And when Germany was defeated, it was a shock to German society.
It gave rise to a lot of conspiracy theories that traitors in the rear surrendered Germany, that, they say, some traitors did not allow the German army to win.
A long self-deception gave rise to this conspiracy theory, and it raised from the bottom and lifted up the most inveterate and marginal political forces.
The historical mistakes of Germany in the twentieth century must be avoided.
Russia has already committed one of them by unleashing an aggressive and suicidal war.
But no less dangerous for Russia are self-deception and illusions.
The longer Russian propaganda maintains hopes for an close victory, the greater the shock for Russian society after receiving
the inevitable news of defeat will be, the more dangerous it will be for our country.
It is not the Armed Forces of Ukraine that are standing on Russian territory, but the Russian army is fighting in Ukraine.
But as for Germany in the First World War, this circumstance does not change anything for Russia.
Our country will lose this war. And not because of some mythical traitors or «foreign agents».
The Russian army objectively could not achieve deliberately vague goals that could not be achieved by military means.
In the absence of allies, Russia will objectively not stand a military and economic confrontation against the new Entente.
This is mathematically impossible.
And it is necessary to realize the defeat as soon as possible.
To stop senseless dwaths of Russians and Ukrainians.
So that both Ukraine and Russia begin to recover faster.
So that the citizens of both states manage to save what can still be saved.
And finally, so that the inevitable defeat does not become a crushing shock for our state, endangering our very statehood.
Until defeat in the war breaks into our lives in the form of an unexpected and complete defeat, we ourselves need to accept it as inevitable.
Accept and think right now about how we will live in the future. How to prevent social explosions.
In peacetime, the citizens of our country, perhaps, still had the opportunity to deceive themselves about Vladimir Putin.
It would seem that raising the retirement age and brazenly rewriting the constitution – contrary to his own promises
– as well as the complete failure of the authorities during the pandemic clearly showed how honest and competent the current president of Russia is.
However, there were still people in our country, and quite a few, who voted for the amendments, but did not believe in the reality of covid.
For them, Putin could still be a good president.
But now there can be no doubt.
Putin has dragged Russia into a brutal and unnecessary carnage.
The goals are absurd.
And the results are already directly opposite to those desired.
We have to admit: Vladimir Putin is just a bad president.
Sounds trivially, but it's true.
The person does not have the necessary qualifications for the position in which he is.
In fact, with his inability to use a computer, he would not have been able to get a job as a store manager, and after everything
that happened, this is already an unambiguous fact: he is a very bad president.
He does not know how to govern the country, he is bad as the supreme commander in chief.
He unleashed a war without clear goals in which he completely lost and dragged the country into a severe and long-term crisis.
The sooner he ceases to be the president of Russia, the sooner we will begin to get out of this crisis.
We live in the twenty-first century with a state leader who seems to have come to us from the time of William the Second.
This is the day before yesterday, which poisons our «today» and deprives us of «tomorrow».
But the laws of nature cannot be deceived – tomorrow will come.
And a person who wanted to go down in history will indeed remain in history, in the past.
The sooner this happens, the sooner our country will stop sliding back on the time scale, will be able to stop, change its mind and finally move forward.
It hasn't happened yet. But it will definitely happen.
See you tomorrow.