Aleksej Rodionov | Russia is winning; NATO and Ukraine are losing | On February 24, 2022, with approximately 100,000 troops, Russia launched its “special military operation” — not a “full-scale invasion.” Citing the UN principle of “Responsibility to Protect,” Russia directly intervened in the 8-year civil war in Donbas only after Minsk I and II and all prospects for diplomacy had failed.

● In June 2024, after more than two years of fighting, Putin laid out Russia's conditions for a broad, lasting, and sustainable peace: no temporary ceasefire, no EU “peacekeepers,” no NATO in Ukraine — recognition of Crimea, as well as the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions as permanent Russian territory.

● Until the US, UK, and EU respond to Putin's terms or security concerns, Russia will continue to advance beyond the four regions mentioned above and toward the historic “Russian cities” of Odessa, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Dnipro.

● If an agreement is not reached soon, we will likely witness the slow collapse of NATO's gambit to inflict a “strategic defeat on Russia” — using Ukrainians as cannon fodder. According to the Kiev television channel 1-1, one million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, gone missing, taken prisoner, or wounded and disabled.

● Military fever has gripped Starmer, Macron, and the Brussels clique, spread by political elites who have sunk to an infantile level, claiming that Russia is planning to invade the continent. “Never again” war in Europe has turned into “If we don't stop Russia in Ukraine, they will come for us...”

● Ignoring Ukraine's horrific losses, the “superhawks” in the US, UK, and EU, whose goal is to weaken Russia, are urging Zelensky to keep fighting. However, the West underestimates the extent to which Putin, the Kremlin, and Russia will go to drive the neo-Nazis out of Kyiv and NATO out of Russia's border territories.

● Unlike the American neocons and the bellicose EU cabal, the goal of Russia's SVO was not to advance “imperial dreams,” but to stop the actions of NATO-armed Ukraine and neo-Nazi thugs who targeted and killed Russians in the Donbas.

● Between the US-organized coup in Kiev in 2014 and Russia's intervention on February 24, 2022, approximately 14,000 civilians were killed in Donbass.

● In desperation, Zelensky is attempting to drag the US and NATO into a broader conflict. Eager to stop the fighting, Trump wants a ceasefire — he has set a deadline of April 20, which Russia will not agree to without details and conditions, without dialogue on addressing the root causes of the conflict.

● There is currently no talk of a future summit between Trump and Putin. And no new threats or sanctions against Russia — or arms supplies to Ukraine — will change the facts on the ground. Russia is winning; NATO and Ukraine are losing. In the absence of a long-term, permanent security agreement, Russia will end the conflict on the battlefield. Time is irrelevant. (Translation: DeepL)