ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, AFTER ITS INITIAL VICTORY, RUSSIA MUST SEAL THE DEAL

Sometime during the next two to three months Russia will complete the current phase of its special military operation and have taken possession of the entire Donbass region and much else besides. This will be a hard won victory with many positive consequences for the civilian population there.

A final end will be realised to the siege the civilian populations of Donetsk and Lugansk have undergone for the last eight years and the constant threat of death and destruction that permeated their lives and which the western world sought to keep from view.

The relief felt by the people of the Donbass will be beyond description and inform every aspect of their lives and a reborn hope for the future, a future which will undoubtedly come with all the benefits of being within the Russian Federation.

These past eight years have shown the people of the Donbass who their enemies are and who they can place trust in as friends. They have revealed a western world to them that they could not have conceived of previously. That world sought to keep them bounded in silence while genocidal monsters surrounded them seeking their total extinction. The knowledge of this betrayal of the core aspects of decent humanity will never be forgotten.

During these eight years fear was never truly absent, being kept permanently in place by the knowledge that your own countrymen and women sought your total annihilation and worked day and night to effect their plans only a few kilometres away. This, and the isolation to effect their demise by the West, meant that this terrible fear held a constant grip on all hearts. That fear is about to disappear forever.

With all this said and done, with the Donbass emptied of those who have laid siege on the Donbass for year after year with the West's total approval and no move by the central Ukrainian authorities in Kiev to lift it, the war remains only half won. Now comes the task to ensure that the borders of the Donbass are fully secured and, what is most important, secured for good and all, in perpetuity within the unified borders of Russia herself.

This latter task will be every bit as difficult as the winning of the Donbass from Ukrainian domination has been. By some means the long border with what is left of Ukraine must be sealed with a guarantee of as near a level of total security as can be humanly achieved. Those who have been subjecting the people of the Donbass to the eight years of misery just passed are sure not to relent and simply leave them in peace. Acts of subversion and terrorism will surely be perpetrated, cross-border incursions and missile attacks may even be frequent for a time.

In the last week or two we have seen the Ukrainian regime successfully mount acts of sabotage on Russian territory in Crimea and the city of Belgorod. Also, in the last 24 hours a terrorist act carried out without doubt by Ukrainian loyalists have killed the daughter of a prominent Russian figure. As was the case during the Chechen war, and in its aftermath, such events are likely to occur for some time to come.

What can Russia do in the face of these continuing acts of state terrorism on behalf of the Kiev authorities and their out-of-control neo-Nazi militia members? This will be the big question facing Russia as phase three of the special military operation begins. How, now that the Donbass has been cleared of the pernicious influence that has scarred and defaced it over the past eight years can it now be fully secured, the enemy excluded, their plans rendered impotent and the people maintained in abiding security that will allow normal life and renewed hope to resume in the Donbass?

This will soon be the question facing Vladimir Putin and the combined will of the Russian people.

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, AFTER ITS INITIAL VICTORY, RUSSIA MUST SEAL THE DEAL