Putin prepared for a war of attrition not only with Ukraine/Getty Images
Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov stressed that the conflict in Ukraine will be protracted. It can be said that this is the first official recognition by a Russian official that the Kremlin is preparing for a long-term confrontation in a neighboring country and has actually begun a war of attrition.
Blitzkrieg was replaced by salami tactics
The fact that the blitzkrieg to seize Ukraine failed was a real shock for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle.
After all, as you know, the Russian leadership planned to take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in just a few days, create a puppet government there, which, for its part, would recognize the Russian status of Crimea and Donbass and create conditions for the annexation of other territories to the Russian Federation, which Moscow was going to make part of the so-called Little Russia.
The puppet government itself was supposed to prepare the conditions for the creation of a union state of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. But on the condition that most of the former territories of Ukraine would become part of the territory of the Russian Federation.
However, nothing remained of the advance of the Russian army to the north, east and south of Ukraine. Now long-term battles are going on, primarily in the Donbass, where the Russian army is trying to reach the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in order to further move the war to the stage of annexation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
Also very important is the fact that now the Kremlin has realized that no blitzkriegs will take place on Ukrainian territory, and they have switched to salami tactics, which Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian President, admits in assessing the situation.
This means that the Russian Armed Forces are going to seize region after region, hold fake “referendums” in the occupied regions on their accession to the Russian Federation, then put Ukraine and the civilized world before the fact that they are already dealing with Russian territory and from this Russian territory already launch an offensive against new Ukrainian regions. This is what Dmitry Peskov calls a protracted crisis.
Appetite grows while eating
At the same time, the idea is thrown into public opinion: if Ukraine tries to act on the territory that Vladimir Putin will declare Russian, in this territory the Kremlin can already use nuclear weapons. In particular, Alexei Venediktov, former editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, spoke about this recently.
Thus, the Kremlin may believe that even if the occupation of the entire territory of Ukraine fails at the first stage of the war against Ukraine, at least most of its territory can be occupied region by region, incorporated into the Russian Federation and, as the Russian president likes to say about it. Vladimir Putin, the issue will be closed.
Yesterday it was the issue of Crimea, now it may be the issue of Donbass, and later, of course, the issue of other Ukrainian regions, which will be proclaimed regions of the Russian Federation.
The Second Front of the War of Attrition
The Kremlin is preparing for a long-term confrontation with the West. Vladimir Putin, who is not very versed in economics, is sure that his country will adapt to Western sanctions and will be able to receive income from the sale of energy resources to Asian countries, while itself, meanwhile, create crises that will lead to a significant deterioration in the situation in the civilized world.
Among these plans of the Russian president are, first of all, an increase in the price of energy resources in the West, as well as provoking famine. We see that this provocation of famine is one of the main political topics in the Russian Federation.
The editor-in-chief of the RT propaganda resource Margarita Simonyan even frankly told Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum that the Russian political elite has all hopes for the famine. And although Vladimir Putin himself denied these allegations of the propagandist, the actions of the Russian president indicate that he agrees with this tactic.
The big migration crisis in Europe, as well as the deterioration of the social situation on the continent, can lead to an improvement in the political positions of the forces on which Moscow is betting. An illustration of the possibilities of such forces was the results of the latest parliamentary elections in France, where the ultra-left bloc of Mélenchon and the far-right party of Marine Le Pen achieved significant success and did not allow the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron to create an established majority in the National Assembly. The representation of the Marine Le Pen party, which previously made no secret of its orientation towards the Kremlin, has increased 10 times.
Well, we are well aware that if the economic and migration crisis become a Western everyday life, this can lead to the triumph of such right-wing populist or left-wing populist forces in many Western countries. And these forces will be much more ready to compromise with the Kremlin over the post-Soviet space than the politicians who now govern Western countries. And this, of course, is what the Kremlin hopes for when they generate crisis after crisis.
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