Putin launches offensive in Donbas

John Paul Duch

Correspondent

Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, February 24, 2022, p. 4

Moscow. President Vladimir Putin, early this Thursday, gave the order to start a special military operation in Donbas, as the Donietsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine are called here, announced in a new, previously recorded message to the nation, which public television broadcast at six in the morning.

I have decided to start a special military operation whose objective is to defend people who have suffered abuse in the last eight years, a genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. And that is why we are going to try to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Likewise, we will try all those who committed bloody crimes against peaceful civilians, including citizens of the Russian FederationPutin noted.

The head of the Kremlin explained that the leaders of the People’s Republics of Donietsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) asked for Russia’s help due to to the aggression of the Ukrainian armywhat obliges us to act without delay, based on the friendship and assistance treaties and with the authorization of the Federation Council (Senate) to use the armed forces outside Russia.

Putin called on the Ukrainian military to surrender: All servicemen of the Ukrainian army who meet this requirement will be able to safely leave the combat zone and go home. The regime that rules the territory of Ukraine will be responsible for the possible bloodshed.

The Russian president stated: we have no plans to occupy the ukrainian territories. He added: we do not want to impose anything by force on anyone and stressed that neither when the Soviet Union was founded nor after the Second World War did anyone ask the peoples who live in Ukraine how they want to organize their lives. Our policy is based on freedom. And we believe it is very important that all peoples living on the territory of Ukraine should be able to exercise this right, the right to choose. everyone who wants it.

In lashing out at the United States and NATO, he pointed out that Russia cannot allow the North Atlantic alliance militarily conquer the territories adjacent to our country, an inadmissible threat to us.

Therefore, if we allow it, they will stay for decades, if not forever. And this represents for Russia an absolutely unacceptable growing danger..

Putin also warned that he would give a crushing responsealluding to the fact that he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against any country that tries to intervene:

Now I want to address all those who might be tempted to get involved in the situation: regardless of whoever wants to hinder us, and much worse creates a threat to our country and our people, they must know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will have consequences devastating that they can not even imaginehe asserted.

And he concluded: We are prepared for any evolution of events. All decisions are already made and I hope to be heard.

Before the fighting began, and the first bursts of projectiles were heard in different places along the so-called line of contact, the President of Ukraine, Volodymir Zelensky, in a message to the nation announcing the entry into force of the state of emergency throughout the country, said that the people of Ukraine want peace, the government of Ukraine wants peace. We are clear that we do not want a cold, hot, or hybrid war and added that, in case they attack us, we will defend ourselves.

Around eight o’clock this Thursday morning, Zelensky again addressed the nation to ask the population for calm. We need all of you, each one, to be calm. As far as possible, stay at home. We are working. The army works. The entire sector of national security and defense of Ukraine works. Soon I will contact you again. No panic. We are strong and we will win.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dimitri Kuleba wrote on Twitter: Putin unleashed the war against Ukraine. Attacks on peaceful cities in Ukraine continue. It is a war of conquest. Ukraine will defend itself and will win.

The mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klichko, also called on the inhabitants of the Ukrainian capital keep calm, don’t panic. She said that Ukraine was attacked by an aggressor. Right now our worst enemy is panic and reported that the authorities of the capital are working and we guarantee the operation of the city. We hold on, we gotta make it.

Amid the confusion, news of explosions began to arrive in cities outside the limits of Donietsk and Lugansk. Adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko reported that Kiev is being bombarded with cruise and ballistic missileswhile Russian soldiers landed in the port of Odessa and try to enter the Kharkov region. Later the army general staff reported that the landing in Odessa does not correspond to reality.

The Russian Defense Ministry, for its part, denied that it was attacking Ukrainian cities and specified that only high-precision weaponry is used to disable Ukraine’s military infrastructure, its anti-aircraft defense systems and other nerve centers of the Ukrainian army such as airfields, weapons depots and barracks in Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Mariupol and other cities in the neighboring country.

The population of Ukraine has nothing to fearmaintains the Russian military unit.

It is not yet clear how far the Russian troops have been able to penetrate and if, in fact, as Putin said, it is only a special military operation to widen the space of the RPD and RPL, which before the start of the war had 30 percent, to the limits of what were the homonymous regions of Ukraine.