After more than a year of civil war and bloodshed in South-Eastern Ukraine, the government in Kiev has to make a choice on what to do in the near future. The country is in a state of bankruptcy, the streets of Kiev are full of so called “patriotic” battalions who are actually neo-Nazis, people have no money to even buy essentials like food and medicine. While the government is still pledging that the EU and the US are going to help and Ukraine is going to turn into a paradise, the people in Ukraine start to feel like they were misled, as they truly were. So, the government has several options:
1st option – The first which seems most likely to happen is to continue the war in Donbass. Though, there is active shelling, on documents there is still a ceasefire agreement in place. Of course, the Ukrainians backed by their US friends will blame the so called “separatists” for violating the truce and will start a new full-scale operation in Donbass. Their problem is that the rebels are stronger and will definitely give them a fight.
2nd option – In the past few weeks, Mikheil Saakashvili became the governor of Odessa, a region which is capable of becoming the next republic in Novorossiya. Saakashvili is a well-known US puppet. Known for his days as the president of Georgia when he started the war against South Osetia in 2008, Saakashvili will do his best to defend the interest of the United States in the region. Last week, missile defense systems ‘S-300’ were deployed near Odessa, which is igniting a new conflict in Transnistria. A conflict in both Transnistria and Donbass will automatically mean a crushing defeat, so probably Kiev’s government is hoping that US will help them.
3rd option – An attack on Crimea. If there is a way to get Russia officially involved in the conflict, that is the easiest one. After Kremlin denied joining the conflict after a series of provocations, an attack on Crimea will definitely mean war. This scenario is unlikely to happen due to the fact that Ukrainians don’t have the guts to start a war against Russia because they know that the Russian army can raise their flag in Kiev in just several hours.
Three war scenarios, none of which are going to be beneficial for Ukraine. An interesting tendency is that the US is actually backing off, and isn’t willing to help Ukraine as they promised to. After John Kerry’s visit to Sochi in May, the US has stopped giving promises to President Poroshenko and his government. We can only guess what Lavrov and Kerry have talked about, but one thing is clear – the US acknowledged that their project ‘Ukraine’ is not going to happen. They saw that you cannot have a russophobic Ukraine, when more than a half of the population in Russian, and that Russia will definitely not allow this to happen. The meeting between the two diplomats indicated that a conflict between the two powers is unlikely to occur and that Ukraine was a failed project of the United States. That means that the US may want to get out of there and finish this thing. How can it happen? Just see the second option. A conflict in Transnistria means to open a second front. If this happens, we’ll have a new country on the map in weeks. Novorossiya will actually become an official country will territories from Lugansk and Donetsk, through Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa, and to Transnistria.
The last possible thing is to leave the conflict as it is right now, and keep the misery for years to come. That will mean a total degradation of the territory we call Ukraine.
Author: Viktor Stoilov is a Bulgarian public speaker and political activist. He is also a contributor to SouthFront project.