After Donbass: How will we live on

What has happened in the last days in practical terms?

It seems to be nothing. To believe that the LPR and the DPR were created and all these years existed by the efforts of local residents who rebelled against the Kyiv junta, and only the most stupid and naive could before. It was clear to everyone else from the very beginning that these territories existed precisely as the zones of Russian occupation in the east of Ukraine, and interchangeable Pushilins and beekeepers seemed to look specially and behaved so as not to even seem real power.

The idea that Russia will be forced to maintain two more territories and is completely capable of impressing only those who did not follow the news. And at whose expense all these malignant geopolitical formations lived all these years? At the expense of Russia, they lived, so nothing new will happen-well, unless, the inhabitants of Russia itself will now have to tighten their belts a little, because the dubious pleasure of keeping beekeepers and Pushilins due to new sanctions will rise a little.

In a practical sense, the history of the notorious “Minsk agreements” ended, which is, that is. But, frankly, they were so written from the very beginning that they could never have earned. All their meaning, in essence, consisted that the actual occupation of part of the Ukrainian territory does not look like that and remains the appearance that Donetsk and Lugansk are still Ukraine, and even Russia has always declared that it is-just there local residents do not want to live without a special status and are afraid of Ukrainian genocide, which is allegedly rampant for 8 years.

So, it seems that nothing radical new has happened - but does this mean that nothing has changed? Alas, but in fact, much has changed. By his decision, Putin set the vector of Russia's movement for years to come. The fate of millions of people, the Russian economy and its future are essentially sacrificed to the ideas about the world and the thirst for the power of one particular person. A separate and big question - how international law will exist further, after the same person twice for a decade violated his most arrogant way in relation to the same country.

Soviet Union Vladimir Putin

All the years of his reign, as it is now finally understandable, Vladimir Putin dreamed of recreating the USSR- and not so much his external borders, the economic model, and aesthetics as the functioning of power in it. Therefore, it cannot be considered so naive that he is in serious to be returned to the subordination of the Kremlin of the country of the Baltic, for example. To some extent, his claims are quite realistic-in his inner logic, of course.

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