“President Putin’s speech before the war,” the newspaper commentator wrote. “Judging from this speech, President Putin will clearly liberate Ukraine from ‘puppets and illegal rule’, just as Stalin liberated the Baltics from such a government,” he wrote.

He also noted that Russian television broadcast a meeting of the Security Council, whose officials “persuaded” Putin to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Unprecedented, the council usually met secretly. This time, the Kremlin found it important to publicly capture the views of every member of top management.

According to the daily, the world will soon receive an answer to the question of whether Putin will be content with recognizing the “people’s republic” or sending Russian troops further into the depths of Ukraine.

As for the first option, there is little hope. “It was only our concern at the time. The goals announced by Putin will not be achieved by recognizing the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. They will only be achieved by completely destroying Ukraine. Recognition of separatists is a step, but not a goal,” Novaya Gazeta said.

According to the newspaper, the situation developed exactly as it did during the war with Georgia in August 2008, from the concentration of troops under the pretext of training, exchange of gunfire, evacuation of residents and then a victory march to the capital.

But the big difference lies in the scale: 30,000 to 50,000 people live in South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgia, while there are several million in the rebel republic of the Donbas. In the case of Georgia, no one believed that war would break out. When that happened, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had just summoned the US Deputy Secretary of State, who advised him not to react to provocations.

In the case of Ukraine, US intelligence published plans for an invasion of Russia several months ago. President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned that the Russian president will start a war, and the newspaper has been on the front page for two months. And Putin’s speech gave all hope, the letter said. The main enemy in this war is the United States of America and its aim is to change the world order that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“This world order states that the main instruments of expansion and the main sources of international weight of countries are developing economies, advanced technology and science. Russia cannot boast of the first, second or third. That’s why it was decided to turn to geopolitics and regional growth,” the authors wrote.

According to him, it is not only Putin who is interested in such a reassessment of the world order, there are at least two other world leaders: China’s Jin Jinping and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who will use the collapse of the world order to build them up. his own kingdom in ruins. They were both too smart to destroy themselves, but they would love to watch the Kremlin play the role of an icebreaker. This will make the US and the West seek alliances with them.

“The main victims of this war are the remnants of freedom in Russia. Until now, official propaganda is completely false, but voluntary. If one wants, he can believe in the little boy who was crucified (in the Donbas), and if not, he can’t. can. Now this belief will become mandatory – as in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, where it is deadly not to believe that separatists saved the population from the fascist genocide of Ukraine,” warned Novaya Gazeta. “A gigantic social experiment has taken place in the Donbas, which has shown that poor, frightened, and unemployed people find mental comfort in considering those who intimidate and deprive them of their jobs as their saviors. Such population loyalty is cheap. Now the experimental results will be expanded upon throughout Russia,” he added.

According to the letter, war can still be stopped – with the defeat of the war. Of course, if the invading forces were crushed or suffered critical losses, a decisive victory would be declared, consisting of defending the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics within the existing borders.

President Putin hopes to restore Russia within historic limits. But at least everything beyond those borders will be lost forever under Russian influence. The future will show whether Putin will restore the Russian Empire or deal the final blow, Novaya Gazeta said. Unfortunately, the plane we were sitting on hit a bottle opener. To be more precise, the pilot accidentally threw it into a bottle opener. It could still stop him, but it’s scary that fate depends only on one person’s decision, the commentator concluded.