While Ukraine is suffering from losses caused by the Donbass conflict, Russia keeps on implementing its sophisticated strategy designed to escalate the situation in the region. This strategy is said to be creating conditions for capturing new territories. This is what military observer Pavel Felhengauer thinks on the matter.
The expert pays attention to the words said by Minister of External Affairs Lavrov who thinks that the Minsk agreement has no potential to resolve the conflict in Donbass. This is why the experts thinks that Russia sees no other way but to let the separatists keep on fighting with Ukraine’s governmental troops. It doesn’t mean that they are going to start an assault. But the tension is likely to remain in the region.
At the same time, there is an extra point of concern for Ukraine. The thing is that Washington is still uncertain about their relations with Ukraine and the Donbass conflict. Donald Trump hasn’t announced his official stance on the matter even though he warned Russia that the Western sanctions would be canceled only if Russia returned the Crimea back to Ukraine and stopped supporting the separatists.
While some politicians and high ranking officials in Moscow and Washington wouldn’t mind making friends, some of their peers don’t want this step. Anyway, expert says that the Russian military don’t want the Donbass conflict to be deescalated. They want tension in there and may be even getting ready for more serious scenarios. The Russian defense budget is said to have got a trillion dollars. At least the expert claims so. During the USSR times, they spent almost half of the budget on defense, which turned out to be one of the key reasons why the USSR ceased to exist. That’s why the expert thinks that militarism jeopardizes the integrity of Russia itself.
