Maidan-3 for Minsk-3, or Where will lie the border between the United States and China?
President Zelenskyy was portrayed in the publication in "Time" for Ukrainians as alone in his own environment, where the anonymous thesis of one of his loyalists prevails - "We will lose. But try to tell him about it."
Two weeks later, Zelenskyy himself reported through the foreign press, again, that the ruscist Maidan-3 project was aimed at removing him from power.
Putting together these two pieces of information from the depths of the presidential administration, we have to conclude that Zelenskyy feels threatened by a coup d'état called "Maidan-3" not from the real Maidan, that is, from the people's protest, but literally from his own entourage in the presidential office at the Russian initiative.
It could have been a Russian psyop "response" to Ukrainian plans to dismember the empire, a tabatiere finale and fantasies about a refrigerator. But in the spring of 2022, the Führer himself called on the Ukrainian army to overthrow the Kyiv regime.
So it's not a joke.
At the same time, the purpose of this coup is fixed here.
If Zelenskyy himself does not believe and is not ready to admit that "we will lose", then his removal would mean admitting Ukraine's loss and everything that follows from it.
And the result is what is called Minsk-3.
It should be added that Zelenskyy's incompliance on various plans for "peace", which are coming thick and fast on Ukraine (instead of the necessary weapons), is supported by the timely approved decision of the National Security and Defense Council to prohibit negotiations with Putin.
Apparently, it is not for nothing that the other day the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Mr. Danilov (who is definitely not in the President's Office), reminded of this ban, and explained the procedure by which the decision can be reviewed. An initiative of some institution is needed, in other words, a scapegoat for people's anger. No, of course, it won't work that way.
And in general, in Ukraine, the possibility of "squandering" territories is quite reliably blocked. Especially in exchange for illusory "peace".
This mechanism is constitutional, the referendum procedure is complicated exclusively on the entire territory of Ukraine.
But neither Russia nor its minions around the world are interested in the Constitution of Ukraine. In which, by the way, from the constitution of the Ukrainian SSR (that is, from the time of the USSR dreamed of by Putin), all regions and Crimea with Sevastopol were transferred.
That is why Putin and his army of "peacekeepers" have to break the entire international system in order to seize at least one Ukraine alone.
Meanwhile, in the picture of the potential threat of a coup d'état outlined by Zelenskyy, there is a lack of information, who exactly is Russia going to put in his position instead of?
Speaker Mr. Stefanchuk?
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych, a smart guy, "canceled" the elections himself by extending martial law.
That is, the actor-intelligence officer, who is remembered by citizens as a pillow portrait, there is no chance of replacing Zelenskyy to negotiate with Putin. Maybe because he was too openly "standing" for these elections, explaining the possibility of their physical holding by the establishment of a temporary ceasefire with Russia.
Then who?
Yanukovych again????
And, in fact, in which courts is he currently defending his rights as a "legitimate" in the absence of the KDAC (Kyiv District Administrative Court)? For example, in 2021, the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) took into consideration a complaint about an attempt on his life during his escape in 2014... The Ministry of Justice should know exactly what is next...
So, the meaning of the Kremlin's initiative to rebel against Zelenskyy can be only one: to find a person who will make a deal with Russia and ... what?
Will he sign a temporary truce?
Will it return all Ukraine back?
A little earlier than this meeting, Minister Kuleba was pleased that the number of peacekeeping initiatives from international partners has decreased significantly.
And then former NATO Secretary Fogh Rasmussen, apparently without consulting Orban and Fico, proposed to accept the unoccupied part of Ukraine into NATO, thus protecting it from further Russian aggression. In the meantime, continue the de-occupation of the rest of the territories.
For some reason, the analogy with post-war divided Germany happily picked up in the media, did not evoke a mention of the People's Democratic Republic, which was even a member of the UN at one time.
But really, what difference does it make – GDR (German Democratic Republic), DPR (Donetsk People's Republic)... (By the way, why does Putin need the administrative border of the Donetsk region?)
At this time, the US Congress is consistently slowing down the allocation of financial assistance to Ukraine, vividly illustrating the way of "unintentional" pressure on Kyiv due to the shortage of weapons.
This is after Zaluzhnyi's call not to let the front fall into stationary paralysis.
So why the pause here and now?
Given the course of events, it is to allow Putin's election to take place in the occupied territories and then present it to the world as an additional aspect of the "existing realities."
Recall that Putin was already elected on the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and Sevastopol in 2018, and then the world turned a blind eye to it.
Only the Verkhovna Rada recorded its non-recognition of the results of these elections, and then with some strange arguments about the undemocratic nature of the process. As if in the occupied territory, the occupier's elections can be democratic in principle.
But now claims to legitimize Putin with the votes of Ukrainians have a completely different context.
The United States and China divide the world into their two spheres of influence. And it is here in the European region that the border between them should pass.
Elementary logic says that this should have been the internationally recognized border of Ukraine in 1991. Since Ukraine is already part of the Western world.
At the same time, Putin has recently declared his anti-Western choice in favor of the eastern horde almost officially. Thus, rejecting the illusion of Western elites that Russia can be torn away from China in favor of cooperation with the West.
Accordingly, by trying to seize Ukrainian territories, the Kremlin is also dragging Ukraine into the Chinese sphere of influence.
Given President Biden's statements and assurances and the assistance already provided to Ukraine, this is not what the United States wants.
At one time, the United States was not interested in creating a China-Russia-Eastern Europe-Germany axis, which Ukraine automatically fell into under Mrs. Merkel and President Yanukovych.
However, to this logic it is necessary, perhaps, to add one already historical plot.
On December 5, 2013, four days after the beating of students on the Maidan, when it was not at all clear what would happen next, the then President of Ukraine Yanukovych, during his visit to Beijing, signed an agreement with Xi Jinping on a powerful investment project for Crimea. It was about a port for the export of grain and all kinds of additional infrastructure, as well as about the lease of agricultural land on the peninsula for the production of grain for China.
Little attention was paid to this because of the events that were happening in Ukraine.
Russia drew attention to the agreement. Why not us? – ruscist journalists wrote at the time.
Publications about that project do not indicate that it is related to the "One Belt, One Road" project, which China has just launched in 2013. But the grandeur of the port infrastructure laid down in it, which, by the way, environmentalists began to complain about, hinted that this could be a variant of China's penetration into Europe through Ukraine, and before that through the Caucasus.
Did this project have the least to do with Russia's motives to occupy Crimea? As a previously occupied part of Georgia?
It is unknown.
Did this project have the least to do with the US ban on Ukraine (who was Mr. Biden in 2014?) to conduct military operations to defend its peninsula?
Was this an agreement between Washington and Moscow? Is it still valid?
Perhaps Putin was going to manipulate, in particular, the territories that were once united in GUAM (Organization for Democracy and Economic Development is a regional organization of four post-Soviet states: Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova -ed. note) in order to regulate the spread of Chinese influence? Why not?
Was it beneficial to the United States? It looks like...
Has it long been this story of China's removal from Crimea that has led to hopes that the Kremlin might join the West in confronting China?
Who knows...
Now, 10 years later, we see that the competition of logistics routes, like recent pipelines, is tearing apart territories. And then all this was not at all obvious.
And even in those days, the Black Sea and Crimea on it were considered remote province of Europe, without any strategic prospects. Therefore, for world leaders, giving up the "consecrated" peninsula to Putin was at most a small commercial transaction, or simply a bribe "to avoid war."
Well, China's claims to be one of only two poles of the world then, 10 years ago, were not declared, as they are now.
Today everything is different.
The fact is that the Chinese project in Crimea, occupied by Russia, did not continue.
China did not come to the occupied Crimea, at least legally adhering to its declaration of respect for the territorial integrity of states.
Beijing clearly does not want to start dominating at least half of the world in such a criminal way. At least publicly, with sanctions from a partner in the development of a planet large enough for the two of them.
Perhaps, if Putin had taken Kyiv in three days, and Ukraine had then carried out all the procedures to join Russia, then China would have recognized Russia's borders with all Ukrainian territory. And that would now be the border between the U.S. and China.
But since this did not happen, the example of Crimea shows that drawing the border between the United States and China along today's front line will not satisfy China.
China, as you know, has taken the other "one way". And already there he faced global competition. And now it's burning there as well...
In this context, isn't the Kremlin's latest attempt to seize the entire Ukraine in order to restore the status quo of pre-Maidan 2013 – this entire Maidan-3 – an attempt to pursue its "one path"?
To at least put the border between the United States and China on the current NATO border.
And not only along the Oleshky - Avdiivka-Bakhmut-Lyman-Kupiansk line...
If this does not suit the West, and the United States in the first place, then it should take care that the "realities that have developed" at the time of Putin's election are not recorded by the forced votes of Ukrainian citizens in the occupied Ukrainian territories.
It is generally accepted that Russia's haste to achieve recognition of "realities", and right before Putin's "election", only means that its so-called strength is running out of steam and needs to be restored. And the "deadline" voiced by Shoigu for an alleged "war of attrition" just before Trump's election in the United States testifies to both exhaustion and dependence on the West.
That is, in fact, to establish some kind of alternative to the current world order of the general "right of force" – Russia has neither its own forces nor even the combined forces of its current allies.
Therefore, the West must have some suicidal motives to help it return to modernity the medieval principle of "whoever has power, so is faith", and whoever has territory, has an identity.
Instead, the West has basic common sense motives to ensure that Ukraine's "realities" return to the 1991 borders with the support of the international community.
After all, no one has yet abolished the clause on respect for the territorial integrity of states in the UN Charter.
Therefore, the UN Charter – even earlier than Zelenskyy's decree – prohibits Ukraine from participating in any discussion of such reconciliation schemes with the aggressor as "territory for peace."
By the way. Not only that but this principle was introduced in the Middle East, when, unlike Ukraine, there were virtually no real borders established after the colonial and mandated existence.
This principle is demonstrating its "effectiveness" right now. A typical "good war" after a "bad peace".
Then. There is an interesting idea floating around (perhaps is this it, Maidan-3?) that Ukraine's victory in the form of reaching the 1991 border does not guarantee our security.
So, they say, shouldn't we devote our energy to victory?
Those who exchanged war for shame received both shame and war. By exchanging victory for security, we will get neither victory nor security.
Is there a more logical way? If NATO membership is a guarantee of security, and there is such a desire on the part of the West to provide us with this, then we just need to quickly help Ukraine win, and then immediately and entirely, not in parts, dead or alive, accept us into NATO.
Proponents of the war freeze appeal to the losses of our military: how many more of our best people must be killed to reach the 1991 borders?
Supporters of the border of 1991 appeal to their children and grandchildren: so that they do not have to fight with the rearmed and reformed Russia. They appeal to the tortured Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in the occupied territories who are waiting for release. To the stolen children, whose brains the ruscist gestapo may not have yet taken away. To Bucha, Izium and further everywhere...
The first ones again dream of making a "showcase" out of the unoccupied part of Ukraine during the ceasefire, which will tempt the ruscists people to build a civilized world for themselves.
The second reminds us that the ruscists horde was tempted to bomb and loot even a very modest Ukrainian "showcase".
The first complained that they overestimated the ability of the deep-seated Russian people to riot in the event of a lack of victory.
The latter believe that Ukraine's victory with the transfer of the front to the borders of 1991 will undoubtedly make the necessary impression on the entire "neutral" world public, which will eventually bet on the real winner.
The world is cold and cynical, experienced geopoliticians teach Ukraine.
Definitely. Therefore, it is worth listening to a very well-coordinated chorus of voices that at the time of the so-called "Prigozhin rebellion" made the maxim: if you start fighting Putin, do not stop.
Especially if it depends on you where the border between the civilizational poles of the planet will be.
And about the "Maidan" -3,4,5... Well, Ukrainians are tired of maintaining disciplined information silence regarding events on the front. So at least information spam will perform this function necessary for the military.
Iryna Pohorielova, for Censor.NET
