As the saying goes, if you want to add guilt, there is no excuse, and now the United States and its Western allies are racking their brains on the issue of suppressing Russia, thinking of adding "charges" to the head of Putin the Great. However, since the Crimean War on March 18, 2014, Russia has long seen through the hypocrisy of Western countries and NATO, favoritism in the territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia, and has long been tired of endless "quarrels" with it. The recent intensification of the situation in eastern Ukraine is, to a certain extent, a continuation of the Crimean crisis many years ago, whether it is the "hard mouth" of the Biden administration or the "hard fist" of Putin the Great, the result we can imagine.
1. The United States is eager to pass a new round of sanctions, but it cannot shake the actual control of the Russian military over Uzbekistan.
Just as history is always strikingly similar, the development of the situation in eastern Ukraine today is the same as it was in 2014. The Western countries led by the United States have taken the same approach to Russia as "old bottles of new wine, changing soup and not changing medicines", and finally ending with condemnation and sanctions. According to the US media led by the Voice of America (VOA), U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday (February 22) that he would impose a "strong" countermeasure against Russia's "unsympathetic troops", including cutting off the Russian government's international financing channels and imposing sanctions on two large banks. In a White House speech on the situation in Ukraine on the same day, Biden also publicly emphasized: "Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the dispatch of troops across the border into the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine on the evening of Monday (21st), which is the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine." Hours before ordering the dispatch, Putin declared the two regions independent and no longer part of Ukraine. Russia's actions against Ukraine are 'flagrantly contrary to international law', and Putin thinks who can give him the right in the name of the Lord to declare the establishment of two new states in the territory of his neighbors? At the end of the speech, the U.S. leader added menacingly that his sanctions would cut off Russia's source of "money from the West." If Russian forces invade Ukraine further westward in the future, Russia will also "pay a greater price", that is, more severe sanctions.
It is reported that the first round of sanctions announced by Biden recently included three men in Putin's small circle: Aleksandr Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security Agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior official in Putin's office, and Peter Fradkov, chairman of Promsvyazbank. Cut the entire Circle of Putin's circle of friends all over the door" posture.
Putin, who has many years of experience in political games with the West, knows very well that no matter what he does, he will be found by the United States and NATO as an excuse for eastward expansion, because the inclusion of Ukraine in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the further compression of Russia's development space is his original intention in provoking the Ukraine issue. In order to achieve this "lofty goal", Biden led by the Western countries also do not hesitate to "open their eyes and talk nonsense" for this, step by step to force the Russian side to a dead end, even if the Russian Ministry of Defense has announced on the 16th that the Russian army partially withdrew from the Ukrainian-Russian border, the Western countries still pretend not to see and do not buy it, and the Ukrainian government army directly launched a surprise attack on the Eastern Region within 24 hours of the Withdrawal of the Russian side.
According to the "script" initially formulated by the US and Ukrainian authorities, if the Russian side chooses to turn a blind eye to the slow encroachment of Ukrainian government forces on Donetsk and Luhansk. The Ukrainian aggressors, who pretend to be "invaded" by the international community, will quickly join NATO after seizing actual control of the above-mentioned areas, in order to gain the support of the organization's "right to collective self-defense". In this way, the Ukrainian authorities will be protected by the Eastern Region and NATO, and the US government can extend NATO power to Russia's "doorstep", change the existing pattern of Ukraine and gain strategic advantages. But the problem now is that the scheming Putin did not give the United States and its Western allies enough time to reflect, so in a quick and chaotic manner, in a television speech on the 21st, he officially declared the independence of the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) and signed a ten-year treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance with them. The treaty allowed Russia to establish military bases on the ground and reached agreements on mutual protection, military cooperation, and border identification, laying the legal basis for the entry of Russian troops. As long as we analyze this, we can find that Putin's move can be described as "countering his human body in his own way", compared with the strategy of the United States to let the Ukrainian government forces occupy Wudong and then protected by NATO, the Russian side is obviously one step faster, directly through the cooperation with the pro-Russian forces in Uganda to achieve "reunification" of the region, can not help but let Biden, who is "Yellow Lord", shout "Broken, I have become a stand-in."
2, the Ukrainian plot is caught in a "Crimean cycle", and the West has actually "lost".
As the saying goes, taking history as a mirror, we can know the rise and fall, but looking back at the beginning and end of the Crimean crisis in 2014, we can find that in the new round of ukraine crisis, the Western countries led by the United States have "lost". At a point when Russia has deployed peacekeepers to Donetsk and Luhansk, neither the United States nor NATO has a proper reason to send troops to fight them. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was still "singing whiteface and singing redface" with the Biden administration, quickly realized that he had lost two of these key areas. In response, Ukraine on Wednesday (February 23) urged Western countries to impose more sanctions on Russia, targeting the Russian economy and President Vladimir Putin's cronies.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also said indignantly on personal Twitter: "We now need to put more pressure on Putin and hit his economy and cronies." More blows, harsh blows, strike now. The West yesterday took the first decisive measures against Russia, for which we are grateful. This remark is very similar to the sentence that Master Tang said in "Let the Bullets Fly": "Ma bandits, at any time, they must be suppressed, and they cannot be suppressed!" Severely suppress, now! Dare to love that the current eastern region of Ukraine has become a region of "troublemaking bandits", but who are the real and fake bandits? Who else but the American soldiers and Ukrainian government troops sent out by the "Yellow Lord" of the United States? Nowadays, Russian President Vladimir Putin's phrase "Suppress bandits! Let's go! Suddenly, the US-led bandit forces were exposed, and they had to think twice about future actions against the Wudong region. Western countries, while announcing new sanctions on Tuesday to punish Russia, threatened to take further action if Russia fully invaded Ukraine. Washington also said it had moved troops and military equipment eastward to the Baltic Sea region (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), while Kiev declared a call for reserves, and the United Nations General Assembly was scheduled to hold a meeting on the situation in Ukraine's "Temporary Occupied Territory" later in the 23rd. However, it turns out that Russia has no intention of invading Ukraine at all, and it is difficult for the West to get a reason to mobilize NATO forces to attack Russia, and the promulgation of a new round of sanctions is purely a subordinate strategy.
So, is Russia really afraid of the overwhelming Western sanctions? The answer, of course, is no. Chris Miller, a Russian affairs analyst at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), pointedly pointed out in an interview with VOA: "The sanctions announced by the West (Monday) will have little effect, whether economically or politically." And the sanctions announced Tuesday, particularly on sovereign debt, will have only a minor, macroeconomic negative effect on Russia. It is reported that US President Biden has met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Demitro Kureba on Tuesday to discuss how to unify the voice in dealing with Russian military operations, and after the meeting, the White House pointed out: "Putin called the military operation in Ukraine, the former Soviet Republic, 'peacekeeping', for which none of us will be deceived, and none of us will be fooled, because he directly attacked Ukraine's right to exist." We will judge Russia by its actions, not its words. The United States is ready, working closely with our allies and partners, to respond quickly and decisively to any Russian aggression against Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken added that in light of the Russian military's recent so-called "maintenance operations," he had canceled the meeting scheduled for Thursday (24Th) with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The United States will also deploy troops in Europe, but not with the intention of going to war with Russia. Blinken believes that Putin's plan has been to invade Ukraine and make it part of Russia, the biggest threat to Europe since World War II. From this we can conclude that the real "Ma Bandits" (the US military) are coming soon.
In response to the US statement that reversed black and white, Putin also declared in a speech at the Kremlin: "Ukraine has never been a 'puppet' of the West, and the 'best solution' to end the Ukrainian crisis lies in the hands of Kiev and NATO, that is, the authorities currently in power in Kiev themselves refuse to join NATO and choose neutrality." The Minsk agreement no longer exists, we have recognized the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, and whether Russian troops enter Ukraine to support pro-Moscow separatists depends on the situation on the ground. Although the prospects for a peaceful end to the conflict in eastern Ukraine are already slim, Moscow has never planned a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. ”
Putin has taken the lead in Ukraine, while Western sanctions have had little effect. In the so-called sanctions in the West, except for the British authorities, which have been excluded by the European Union and are known as the loyal dogs of the United States in the Atlantic Ocean, have responded positively to the call, most European countries have only made a "symbolic voice" on the surface. Because nearly 40 percent of Europe's natural gas and 25 percent of its oil currently come from Russia, and it's likely to be hit by already soaring heating and gas bills. Due to the cold weather in the coming weeks, natural gas reserves are less than one-third of the total capacity, European leaders have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of reducing supply in order to gain political advantage, if Europe complies with the United States call to impose a new round of sanctions on Russia, it will inevitably lead to a lose-lose situation between Europe and Russia, and finally make a wedding dress for "American interests". The Fed, by contrast, already faces its highest inflation in 40 years, reaching 7.5 percent in January and expecting to start raising rates next month. The imposition of sanctions on Russia by Europe and the United States under such conditions is completely wounding the enemy eight hundred and inflicting a thousand self-inflicted wounds, including Britain, which has become the "sounding board" of the United States.
It is reported that the world-renowned shell and Total oil companies have joint ventures in Russia, while BP boasts that it is "one of the largest foreign investors in Russia" and has ties to Rosneft. European aviation giant Airbus imports titanium from Russia, and European banks, especially those in Germany, France and Italy, have provided billions of dollars in loans to Russian debtors, which will be destroyed if the two sides "go to war" at an economic or military level. What worries the West most is that the growing sanctions will further push Russia to forge closer economic ties with China, and the two countries recently negotiated a 30-year contract for Russia to supply natural gas to China through a new pipeline, and russia may shift all its energy and commodity exports to China in the future, leaving Europe in an energy shortage. These concerns have left Europeans in the throat and unable to "actively cooperate" in following the Americans in sanctioning Russia. It turns out that the moment Putin gains dominance of the situation in Ukraine, he has already won.