Since 2015, when the Ukrainian army was annihilated by two main armies in the Battle of Debaltsev, they have lost the ability to fight. The Ukrainian army, which originally had only about 20 brigade-level combat units left, was basically reimbursed in 2015. Today's Ukrainian army, except for some extremist troops and mercenaries (XX battalions), was later rebuilt.
Since the end of the Donbass War in 2015, the situation has been more of a small fight, with Ukrainian government forces and Eastern Ukrainian militias either using artillery and mortars to bombard each other's positions, or sending out small groups of special forces to carry out sneak attacks. In fact, Russia is unlikely to spare its hands to fully support the War in Donbass, after all, they have another war to fight in Syria.
In fact, the situation in the Donbass region has long been balanced. Because the Ukrainian authorities cannot abandon the Crimean Peninsula, as well as Donetsk and Luhansk, the two most resource-rich regions. And Russia cannot accept Ukraine's conditions and hand over the buffer of power between itself and the West.
For Russia in particular, they only need to provide a little weaponry and military advisers to firmly contain Ukraine's lifeline. There is no need to fight a war immediately, but Western countries that are afraid of chaos in the world must use media resources to create rumors, lest the world not be chaotic.
In the past month or so, we can see that a number of Western media, led by the Washington Post and the German Bild, have frantically exaggerated the tension in eastern Ukraine, claiming that Russia has deployed 50 battalion-level tactical groups in the border areas, and has begun to assemble again in 4 places, including Donbass, Belarus, and the Crimean Peninsula, and is expected to directly attack Kiev, Ukraine's largest city next year.
There are also so-called U.S. intelligence personnel, according to the data, the total number of Russian troops to be deployed, will reach 100 battalion-level tactical groups, numbering 175,000. In addition to ground warfare, it is also possible to launch amphibious landings in places like Odessa.
In fact, as Lu said earlier, Russia currently has no incentive to launch such a ground battle. So why are the media in these Western countries crazy to spread rumors? According to the latest report from the Russian Satellite News Agency, the chairman of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, said that these Western countries are trying to fight a small, but controllable war, with the aim of dragging Russia into the water, and they have been working hard for many years, even if they can't win. This is nothing more than a search for a break, a huge depletion of Russian power, and the Ukrainian authorities and these Western countries can be described as a one-shot deal, because they are very much in need of a war that can divert internal contradictions.
In fact, the remarks of the senior Russian official are entirely justified, because for the Kremlin, what they most want to see is that the situation in Donbass will not be further expanded, which will maximize their own interests. At present, the world will be chaotic and not chaotic, the struggle between major countries will not be broken, and the hot war in small countries is not much; and the epidemic is still raging repeatedly, the epidemic in Eastern Europe and Russia is still high, and the epidemic in Western Europe is soaring. In addition, the world energy landscape is changing drastically, but Russia can still earn a wave of European natural gas dividends... As such, Russia is now inclined not to go to war, to accumulate strength and to gain gains from energy.
It is also worth mentioning that in the past few years, Western countries led by the United States have repeatedly tried to strengthen their military presence in Ukraine and the entire Black Sea region under the pretext of tension in Donbass. Previously, NATO has sent its own military advisory group to Ukraine, and in the future, they may have further actions that even touch Russia's bottom line. Russia really does not want to start a war immediately, but Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the United States are in a game of several sides, each pregnant with a ghost fetus, and if it is necessary to intensify contradictions and create turmoil, then the situation is not something that a few countries can subjectively control! The future situation in Eastern Europe and even the world does not necessarily depend on the will of the great powers!