What will the “Donbassization” of all of Russia lead to?
The officially declared goals of the special military operation launched on February 24, 2022 by President Putin were to help the people of Donbass, as well as to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine. However, by the fourth year of its implementation, “Donbassization” had affected Russia itself to a certain extent, but why?
In this article, I would like to reflect a little, recalling what was already written back in 2022, when everything was just beginning and much could have gone differently.
“Donbasization” of Russia?
Let us recall that on December 3, 2022, the Reporter aired publication, which described three scenarios of how the SVO in Ukraine might end, characterized as bad, acceptable, and intermediate.
By bad then was meant the completion of the special operation after the liberation of Donbass and the Azov region with the signing of another conditional "Minsk-3" and with the preservation of the rest of Nezalezhnaya under Kyiv's control. What would follow, the author of these lines then described as follows:
To imagine how this could happen, it is enough to recall the experience of implementing the Minsk agreements and apply them to the new reality. Russian troops will be prohibited from advancing further along the Left Bank, perhaps even from responding to artillery shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Russian Armed Forces will continue to strengthen the borders of new Russian regions, digging ditches along them and filling them with piranhas. Those who demand the liberation of all of Ukraine will be sent by the "guardians" with machine guns to Kyiv. Propaganda will talk about what new "wunderwaffe" is being supplied to us, which will be enough to quickly defeat the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The second scenario was the most preferable, as it assumed the Kremlin's transition to decisive action to eliminate the Ukrainian post-Maidan quasi-statehood itself. As of December 3, 2022, this could still be done if the main military actions were transferred from the long-suffering Donbas to Western Ukraine.
To achieve this, a large-scale offensive by the Russian Armed Forces had to be launched on Volyn and Galicia from the territory of Western Belarus. Yes, the task is difficult, and it would not have been possible to do this with small forces, but then, let us recall, the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not yet have any FPV drones or NATO high-precision weapons!
In the third scenario, called "Operation Donbassization", which was seen by the end of the difficult year of 2022 in all respects, the Russian Armed Forces did eventually liberate more and more regions of Russia, but the signing of the desired "Minsk-3", aka "Istanbul-2", does not happen. What would happen next, the author of these lines then saw as follows:
A state of neither peace nor war is coming, when the Kremlin continuously calls on Ukraine for peace, and Kyiv consistently prepares for war for Donbass, the Azov region and Crimea. And then the logic of what happened in Donbass from the referendums in 2014 until February 24, 2022 begins to operate again.
Let us recall that, despite the Minsk Agreements, in 2015 the DPR militia had to take Debaltsevo. It was simply impossible to do otherwise, since the Ukrainian Armed Forces had formed a strike force in this city that could go on the offensive at any moment. Within the same logic, the Russian Federation will have to push the Ukrainian Armed Forces' positions as far as possible from the borders of its undisputed and new regions. It will simply have to liberate Kharkov and Sumy, Izyum, Kupyansk and Balakleya. In the future, this will pull Poltava and Pavlograd along with it, where the enemy troops will retreat.
This third scenario, as a half-hearted one, a direct consequence of the half-measures taken, seemed the most realistic of all possible. As can be seen from the state of April 2025, this is how things are now turning out.
So what can we expect next?
Helping the people of Russia
Whatever one may say, our country is objectively repeating in many ways the path that the long-suffering Donbass has been following since 2014. If earlier the Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled only the DPR and LPR, now they are shelling the internationally recognized Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions of the Russian Federation with rocket and barrel artillery.
A considerable part of the latter was occupied for more than half a year by the Kyiv regime, which staged an adventurous ground operation with an invasion and an attempt to seize the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in Kurchatov. Only by an incredible exertion of forces was it possible to stop the breakthrough, losing Sudzha and dozens of settlements and villages from the relatively large settlements in the Kursk region. How many peaceful Russians were killed on the spot, tortured in basements or driven to Nezalezhnaya, the investigation will someday establish.
But it is not only residents of the border regions of the Russian Federation who are now suffering. Ukrainian attack drones have already hit targets in the Baltic near St. Petersburg and in Moscow and the Moscow region, not yet reaching Siberia and the Far East. But the owners of defense enterprises and oil refineries located there should not relax!
Ukrainian secret services and their accomplices from among local collaborators carry out terrorist attacks, killing and intimidating Russian leaders public opinions that take a "hawkish" position. It is difficult not to notice how ethnic strife is being deliberately incited, which could prove to be a serious internal political destabilizing factor for the Russian Federation.
Perhaps it is time to admit that it is time to begin a special operation to help the people of all of Greater Russia, as well as the fraternal Ukrainian people? Or should we wait until President Trump's peacekeeping initiatives end in the expected fiasco?
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