06/12/2024 – Translated from Ukrainian via Gogle and OFP

The first attack on the territory of the Russian Federation by a military aircraft clearly demonstrated how much the nature of war has changed since February 2022 and, of course, over the past ten years. In 2014, Ukraine’s main task was to withdraw its troops from the territory captured by Russia. There was no talk of resisting the occupier at that time: the security forces were demoralized by the many years of efforts of Viktor Yanukovych and other agents of Russian influence in the Ukrainian leadership and society, and society was literally shocked by the war, writes Vitaly Portnikov for Crimea. Realities.

In 2022, after a large-scale attack by Russia, Ukrainian armed forces began striking the territory of Crimea and other occupied regions of the country using Western weapons. This decision was also not made without hesitation; many in the West thought that permission to attack Crimea could lead to retaliatory strikes by Russia not only on the territory of Ukraine, but also on the territory of NATO countries. But when no retaliatory strikes followed, Western leaders apparently decided for themselves that Putin “understands everything” and the main thing is to contain Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s sovereign territory.

This decision, of course, clearly showed an unwillingness to realize the true intentions of the Russian leader. The question is not at all whether Putin “understood” or not that, from the Western point of view, Crimea is not Russian territory at all, and therefore the decision to allow Ukrainian strikes on the territory of the peninsula does not at all mean an attack on Russian sovereignty and security. The point is that if Putin decided to get involved in a direct conflict with NATO, he would not hesitate to use attacks on Crimea as a pretext. The absence of such a reaction precisely meant that Putin – despite all his belligerent rhetoric – was not ready for such a direct conflict. And it is precisely this principle that should have been applied long ago to attacks on the sovereign territory of Russia.

One should not reason in the logic of “if we agree to strikes with Western weapons on Russian territory, Putin will strike in response,” but should adhere to the approach “if Putin decides to strike the West, he will use any reason to commit to such a strike, even if we do not give him a reason to attack.” And in order to understand the correctness of this particular interpretation of the actions of the Russian president, it is worth remembering how Russia’s big war against Ukraine began – when Ukraine did not give any grounds for an attack, and Putin looked for and found false reasons.

Perhaps it was precisely this understanding of the essence of Russian policy that prompted Ukraine’s allies to allow the use of Western weapons to strike Russia’s sovereign territory. Now Crimea has ceased to be an exception.

https://war.obozrevatel.com/kryim-perestal-byit-isklyucheniem.htm