Hopeless Ukraine (excerpt)

There are a lot of talking and writing about Ukraine now.
This is because of the fact that President of Russia Mr. Putin has been waging a war with the collective West just in Ukraine’s territory for some reason since 2014 and now there is a real threat of invasion of Russian troops.

Mr. Putin has already annexed Crimea in 2014 and organized and supported 2 unrecognized "republics" in the east of Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk "People's Republics"). He does not recognize Russia as a part of the armed conflict in Donbas and denies the presence of Russian troops on Ukrainian territory, although there are quite a lot evidences of the contrary.

The overall number of confirmed deaths in the war in Donbas since April 6, 2014, has been put at 13,100–13,300, by 31 January 2021.


Mr. Putin states that Ukraine is a “failed state” and Russians and Ukrainians are "one people". He has now gathered a 100,000-strong army near Ukraine's borders and almost openly threatened to invade. Ukraine asks for help from the West, but the West has a lot of its own problems.

Mr. Putin wants guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO because he believes it poses a threat to Russia. NATO has an "open door" policy, that’s why all negotiations in January 2022 (with Mr. Biden in Geneva, NATO countries in Brussels and the OSCE in Vienna) came to a deadlock. And that's not the only reason. Putin also wants to return NATO infrastructure to the level of 1997, but 14 countries have joined NATO since that time. This is an obviously unacceptable demand and Mr. Putin should understand that.

The sides set out their positions at negotiations, and now someone has to do something or retreat. The collective West will not do anything for sure and there is no reason to retreat yet either. Mr. Putin will have to do something – to attack Ukraine, withdraw troops from the Ukrainian border (which is a “loss of the face”) or "retreat halfway", which is the most probable - for example, the Russians will withdraw half of a 100,000-strong group from the border and then keep on their blackmailing.

The main question that worries everyone right now is: why is he staking everything? Because by raising the stakes, Mr. Putin is also taking a big risk. The emperor has no right to retreat, otherwise he can be removed by his own cronies. What is his plan?


You have read an excerpt from the article. The complete series of articles "Hopeless Ukraine" will be available for purchase as a separate book on my website becomethyself.com in a while.