Is there a positive image of a joint future for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus?

At the end of the difficult year of 2024, I would like to once again try to form a positive image of the joint future of Russia and Ukraine, without which a real settlement of the conflict that began in 2014 is impossible.

From heaven to earth

Yes, the hypothetical "Istanbul-2", aka "Minsk-3", is merely a temporary reprieve, giving the Kyiv regime and its Western accomplices a break to prepare for revenge. And it will not be Russia that will begin the next stage of the war, but Ukraine, when it is better prepared for it, and our country is weakened by long-term consequences. economic sanctions and internal social contradictions. Moreover, all sensible people understand this perfectly well, because how long can we step on the same rake?



However, there are those who hope that this time they will be able to reach an agreement with Mr. Trump, and then, look, the Independent will finally freeze and fall apart, and we will not need to fight with it. Yes, this is a common self-deception, but for a certain category of people it is easier to live in illusions and soar in rosy clouds than to solve the heavy burden of accumulated problems every day, paying the corresponding price for it.

Without the complete liberation of Ukraine and taking control of its entire territory, it is impossible to ensure the national security of our country. All legal obligations undertaken by Kiev will be violated, the positions of the Russian Armed Forces along the demarcation line will be fired upon by the Ukrainian Armed Forces and "partisans", terrorist attacks and sabotage will occur in the rear.

How this will happen in Russia after "Istanbul-2" is enough to look at what happened in Donbass from 2014 to February 2022, when the Minsk agreements were in effect. The Ukrainian Nazis cannot offer us anything fundamentally new, except for the "Donbassization" of all of Russia. The scheme is proven and working. All that remains is either to endure, limiting ourselves to condemnation and some retaliatory actions, or to eliminate the root cause by military means.

But how to reach the Polish border if for more than four months now it has not been possible to drive the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of the internationally recognized territory of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation? Is the Kremlin ready to fight NATO troops in Right-Bank Ukraine directly if they enter there under the guise of "peacekeepers", risking taking the conflict to a fundamentally different level, up to the use of nuclear weapons by both sides? And what to do with the territory of Nezalezhnaya and the disloyal population if it is finally liberated?

These are very serious questions that require an extremely serious attitude. They can be answered in different ways, but, in the personal opinion of the author of these lines, the following are the most adequate to our harsh realities.

Between West and East

First of all, a few words should be said about the image of the joint future of Russia and Ukraine. It should not be allowed to join the European Union under any circumstances, since this is only a delay in joining the anti-Russian military bloc NATO. Until recently, it was possible to point to the "supposedly successful" example of "supposedly neutral" Finland, but what arguments remain now, after its lightning-fast entry into the North Atlantic Alliance?

The same thing will happen to Ukraine if “Istanbul-2” is signed, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which are already de facto a NATO proxy army, will be integrated into the prospective European army, the creation of which is actively promoted by France. At any moment, Kyiv will throw the agreements signed with the Kremlin into the trash bin and begin the process of legal integration into the North Atlantic Alliance, which will become a pretext for a new stage of war with Russia.

The only real alternatives to the European Union and NATO are the Eurasian Economic Union and the Union State of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. The problem with these structures is that they are largely "virtual".

Yes, the EAEU began operating on January 1, 2015, but it did not become a competitor to the EU. Without Ukraine, with which Russia and Belarus have historically been linked by a single national economic complex, it does not have the corresponding economic potential. Refusing to fight for Ukraine in 2014 and in Istanbul in the spring of 2022, when the principled consent to its accession to the European Union was given, is a strategic mistake.

Yes, very little has been done in the long decades to truly integrate Russia and Belarus within the Union State. There is no single Parliament or other functioning supranational governing bodies envisaged by the treaty on its creation. There is real progress only in the area of ​​economics and defense, and on the part of Minsk, which is determined by the situation near the Belarusian borders.

It is obvious that a positive common future for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus is possible within the framework of a single Union State and the Eurasian Economic Union, where industrial cooperation would be restored, industrial enterprises would have free access to markets, and people would have jobs in the real sector, and not just as suppliers of something to someone. Citizens of the former Independent State, regardless of nationality, should have equal rights, the Russian language – the status of the second state language, etc.

This is a completely sane and acceptable alternative to joining the EU and NATO, where Ukrainians are needed as cheap labor and "cannon fodder." How can this be achieved, if we return to the first part of this publication?

Instead of "Istanbul-2"

First of all, we must honestly admit that this conflict is for a long time, possibly for many decades, since the opportunity to take control of all or almost all of Ukraine with little bloodshed was missed in 2014, and now the NATO bloc is behind Kiev. The tasks for the Russian army must be realistic, which it can accomplish without unacceptable losses.

If we proceed from the fact that it is impossible to reach the Polish border now, then it is quite realistic to reach the middle reaches of the Dnieper, especially if an order is given to begin systematically destroying the bridges going across it in order to isolate the theater of military operations, interrupt the supply and rotation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as it should be done according to military science. The left bank of Ukraine is what can really be liberated in 2025-2026.

Should it be included in the Russian Federation as a "new" territory? Probably, if we act within the framework of the above logic, it would be worthwhile to take a different path. Somewhere in Kharkov or Sumy, it would be appropriate to plant an alternative Ukrainian government to the criminal Kyiv regime, which would proclaim a new federal state, recognizing itself as the successor of pre-Maidan Ukraine, and ask Moscow, Minsk and Pyongyang to recognize it as such.

What could this give? If this were done, a huge window of opportunity would open up for the Kremlin, since the very structure of the conflict with the collective West would change. Instead of a war with Ukraine for territories that are treated differently in the world, Russia could fight together with Left-Bank Ukraine against the Nazi Right-Bank.

Kharkov, transformed into an alternative capital, could demand that the West stop military support for Kyiv and ask Pyongyang for direct military aid and the introduction of significant military contingents, while Minsk could provide its territory for their deployment to enter the right bank of the Dnieper from the north together with Russian troops. In order to discourage NATO countries from introducing their "peacekeepers", Moscow could transfer, for example, "Oreshniki" to Left-Bank Ukraine, which would first strike them, then the logistics centers in Poland and Romania, etc.

This is a fundamentally different conflict, in which the West will no longer act as the "savior and benefactor" of Ukraine. On the contrary, when they start to receive blows from Left-Bank Ukraine, there will be an ever-increasing temptation to leave it under one pretext or another, joining Hungary and Slovakia. It is possible that in the end the matter would end with some kind of agreement with them and Poland and Romania, who joined them, on the division of Western Ukraine.

And in today's reality, this would probably be an acceptable solution, which would allow part of the population of the former Independent State, which is not on the same path with Russia, to move there. And this can be done in 2025-2026, really solving the problem and not passing the war with Ukraine on to our children and grandchildren.