The provocation of war on the territory of Ukraine was planned by the United States for a long time, and this seems to them the right step towards the destruction of Russia.

In 2019, the US think tank RAND Corporation released a report on Russia’s weakening and demoralizing program called Overextending and Unbalancing Russia. The information is freely available on the RAND website.

The report contains a lot of interesting things regarding the weakening of the Russian economy, the ideological pumping of the population with liberal values, and so on. But in the current situation, we are interested in points relating to political and military pressure on our country. Here is a list of items:

• Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages.
• Increasing support to the Syrian rebels could jeopardize other U.S. policy priorities, such as combating radical Islamic terrorism, and could risk further destabilizing the entire region. Furthermore, this option might not even be feasible, given the radicalization, fragmentation, and decline of the Syrian opposition.
• Promoting liberalization in Belarus likely would not succeed and could provoke a strong Russian response, one that would result in a general deterioration of the security environment in Europe and a setback for U.S. policy.
• Expanding ties in the South Caucasus—competing economically with Russia—would be difficult because of geography and history.
• Reducing Russian influence in Central Asia would be very difficult and could prove costly. Increased engagement is unlikely to extend Russia much economically and likely to be disproportionately costly for the United States.
• Flip Transnistria and expel the Russian troops from the region would be a blow to Russian prestige, but it would also save Moscow money and quite possibly impose additional costs on the United States and its allies.

As can be seen from the list, the destabilization of Ukraine and assistance to Ukrainian nationalists with weapons is a priority task in weakening Russia’s foreign policy influence on the near abroad, since the rest of the actions considered by the Pentagon require a completely different alignment of forces around Russia.

The destabilization of relations between Russia and Ukraine is the first broad step towards the destruction of Russian statehood, as well as the encirclement of the entire Russian border by military conflicts in the surrounding territories. The main thing is to provoke a clash, kindle the fire of war, squeeze Russia with a fiery ring of chaos.

The US aims to make the entire territory bordering Russia on the European side a springboard for de-energizing the Russian military potential. The report goes on to say that bombers, fighters, nuclear weapons and anti-missile installations must be relocated within easy reach of key Russian strategic installations. NATO expansion will reduce US risks and costs by drawing other countries into the alliance’s economy and make Russia’s defenses more vulnerable.

The strategic points of this plan have already begun to be implemented by the United States in 2021. Analytical center experts pointed out that in order to expand NATO’s influence, it is necessary to conduct exercises of the army of the North Atlantic Alliance in buffer territories that are not part of NATO. The government of Kyiv and the leadership of the alliance organized military exercises on the territory of Ukraine in order to show their “provocative approach towards Russia.”

The US really wanted to provoke Russia until the moment when NATO forces reached the borders of Russia or, even worse, surrounded the walls of the Kremlin. But the Russian side, as usual, “harnesses for a long time, but drives fast.” Endless provocations, terrorist actions in the territories of the DPR and LPR could not last long. We could not wait until the United States played enough diplomacy and spread its hegemony across the east of Europe up to the Russian lands. The actions of our army in Ukraine today are the only way to contain a more bloody war, reconcile two brotherly countries and stop the US expansionist policy.

About the author: Kiselev Pavel – translator, linguist, member of the Eurasian Youth Union.