The summarizing balance sheet war christmas, which, according to a not very reassuring forecast by Lucio Caracciolo, may not be the last to be recorded after only 16 casualties and 64 wounded Kherson In the bombing of civilians the night before, there were further signs of escalation: the air alert extended from the Kyiv and Lviv regions to the whole country, the recommendations of the Kherson authorities to the residents in the last few hours evacuate Due to the intensification of air raids (7 on December 26), an explosion occurred in Belarus of a Russian supersonic interceptor confirming the escalation of the war synergy with Lukashenko.
At the same time, with punctual Christmas mood, Putin on state TV Rossiya 1, that is, his megaphone, the answer to the insidious question “whether Russia can treat Ukraine in a cynical and insidious way, as Western countries do”, guaranteed that Russia could never deal with Ukraine with similar cynicism , and repeated: “We are ready to negotiate with all subjects involved but it depends on you“. Complete with a tried and tested refrain against Kyiv and its allies for “refusing to negotiate” and yet another explicit indictment of “the West trying to divide Russia.”
also read
Ukraine, live reporting – Lavrov: “Kyiv accepts our proposals or the army will take care of it”. Donetsk, family slaughtered: 3 children also killed
A reply to the statement “The sooner the war ends, the better”in the context of Zelenskyy’s speech to the US Congress on December 22 and openly contradicting the assessment of two weeks ago when he believed that the invasion of Ukraine “could still be a long process”. A series of outcomes more or less calculated or dictated only by contingent necessity have to climb increasingly on mirrors and so contradictory and unreliable that they should be perceived as such by every viewer, including belligerent pacifists our own, who on the contrary, blinded by anti-European resentments and anti-Western prejudices, prefer to hang on to Putin’s forked tongue.
The annoyance is understandable and the decomposed reactions unmistakable, once and for all “Zelensky son of a bitch of the west” (according to spokeswoman for Sergey Lavrov), beyond the usual arrogance and provocation to which the Kremlin has accustomed us in recent months in response to Bakhmut’s trip to the White House and the Congress of the President of Ukraine, a trip perhaps determining also for the outcome and timing of the conflict.
The former comedian’s flash trip to his critics or Time and Financial Times Man of the Year, as well as to many ordinary citizens who continue to prefer democracies to autarkic and Orwellian regimes, was an event in itself relevant and an open challenge for the tyrant, believing he could eliminate him like a chess pawn in a week. And even more so his speech met with an unexpected reception by Congress, where he was deluged with bipartisan applause and a sustained standing ovation that objectively recognized Zelensky’s effective and symbolic role that he thereafter captured over 300 days endurance to Putin’s arrogance and brutality.
also read
Flags, quotes and appeals: Zelenskyy meets Biden and symbolically asks the USA for more military support
Firmness and coherence were the hallmarks of a speech that ended with Zelensky reiterated its unequivocal position since the beginning of the invasion when 60 km of tanks, marked with the Z that would denote all subsequent horrors, were menacing lined up to the heart of Kyiv – where they never got there. For the simple reason that the former comedian “Jew and Nazi like all his people” according to “Taube” Lavrov and his supporters, risking their lives, rejected the government’s offer biden to leave the country and reply: “The battle is here. I need ammo, not a ride.”
Similarly, after 300 days of resistance, an unbearable winter and the prospect of an impending Russian counter-offensive from the north backed by Belarus, Zelenskyy stressed that Putin’s goals “can go further Ukraine to the states of the former Soviet Union” and so that Ukraine “stays alive and resists”, it needs weapons: “We have artillery, thanks, is that enough? Honestly not.” And with that speech at a particularly thorny moment when a new Congress is about to take office, when Parliament will have a Republican majority and Trumpians are firmly on Putin’s side, Zelensky is wholeheartedly managed to be greeted as a great ally and heroic figure who made of Kyiv a bulwark against the dictatorship. But he also managed to secure with the Patriots the air defenses that had been demanded for months, which could have saved so many lives, especially since the “special operation” (defined as war only at Christmas, perhaps because of Putin, as he had announced he wanted to start “being serious”) focused on thatdestruction of civilians with the destruction of water and energy infrastructure.
Even if Ukraine brought home “only” the patriots and not the long-range missiles, they were enough to make Christmas Putin very nervous, who was dwelling on the goal of “ending this war”: in fact, he did them as “obsolete” and scornfully declared “we will crush these too” as he had previously done after the tanks were sent, even if “they risk prolonging the conflict”. And even more contemptible was the former Russian president, now deputy chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedevwho reiterated the aim of the special military operation: “to overthrow the disgusting regime of the Kiev nationalists”.
also read
Ukraine, Putin: “All conflicts end in negotiations. Patriot obsolete”. In Mariupol “another 10,000 new graves”
Except that even the most ardent supporters of special operations will soon have to deal with the inevitable boomerang effect this nefarious attack, which initially produced “an enormous consolidation of Ukrainian identity, even among Russian-speaking Ukrainians” (Michael Walzer, political scientist, professor at Princeton). But even worse, from Moscow’s point of view, is the evidence that “For the West, Ukraine is no longer a peripheral former part of the USSR that didn’t settle accounts with the old Moscow master. She has become the fearless democratic barrier against the attack of universal autocracy” (Domenico Quirico, La Stampa of 12/23/22).
And there might even be a vague prospect of a “just” peace in non-biblical times when, as recent polls suggest and also confirmed by Russian analyst and political strategist Abbas Gallyamov, the situation in Russia has changed significantly: the number of Supporters of the victorious war against Ukraine should be annihilated go on noticeably go down, while those in favor of peace negotiations are increasing. A reconfirmation of the fact, which was already evident with the flop of the forced recruitment, that the people they don’t want to fight and they don’t want to see their loved ones involved in an increasingly bloody and unsuccessful war. And so the base of the regime shakes, also thanks to the “patriots” on the far right, the Wagner supporters disappointed by the Tsar, aware that they have no real room for maneuver because “in this case the West and indeed the whole World acted too uniformly”. For once, the much-maligned West and “Suicide-prone and enslaved by Biden” Europe would have taken the right path, namely that of the strengthwith all due respect to Professor Orsini and the philosopher Di Cesare.
It is difficult to say whether the peace summit at the end of February should preferably take place at the United Nations, announced the Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba the Associated Press, may be within the realms of reality or wishful thinking, but it’s still something that hasn’t been talked about.