Russian President Vladimir Putin directly appealed to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) during his national address early Thursday morning announcing the commencement of his country’s special operation in Ukraine that was launched on purely self-defensive grounds. Here’s what he told them:

“Comrade officers,

Your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not fight the Nazi occupiers and did not defend our common Motherland to allow today’s neo-Nazis to seize power in Ukraine. You swore the oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people and not to the junta, the people’s adversary which is plundering Ukraine and humiliating the Ukrainian people.

I urge you to refuse to carry out their criminal orders. I urge you to immediately lay down arms and go home. I will explain what this means: the military personnel of the Ukrainian army who do this will be able to freely leave the zone of hostilities and return to their families.

I want to emphasise again that all responsibility for the possible bloodshed will lie fully and wholly with the ruling Ukrainian regime.”

That was not only a compelling outreach to those who probably only joined the UAF out of economic desperation, but also a humanitarian gesture considering the fact that their US-backed post-coup authorities just called up their military reservists, many of whom might not even want to fight.

President Putin’s extensively researched article from last summer “On The Historical Unity Of Russians And Ukrainians” proved just how passionately he feels about that fraternal people. Under no circumstances would he want the brotherly Russian forces to harm any innocent Ukrainians.

That’s precisely why the Russian Aerospace Forces (RAF) are only striking military targets with precision weaponry in order to avoid any collateral damage among civilians. As for those located in these selfsame military targets, President Putin wanted to give them time to flee if they so choose.

He’ll never forget their predecessors’ sacrifices during what Russia regards as the Great Patriotic War against genocidal Nazi Germany. Those in uniform who are ordered to fight against Russia’s peacemaking forces on behalf of their current fascist leaders are spitting in the face of their ancestors.

By reminding the members of the UAF that they swore an oath to the Ukrainian people and not any particular government, President Putin hopes that those with a clear enough conscience and who still retain some semblance of historical memory despite 8 years of propaganda will give up the fascist fight.

In rightly laying the entire blame for the most immediate trigger of this conflict onto the ruling Ukrainian regime, the Russian leader is absolving those below it of responsibility except for anyone who committed bloody crimes against civilians so long as they flee from their posts while they still can.

President Putin isn’t the so-called “bloody ethno-supremacist dictator hellbent on restoring the Soviet Union” like the US-led Western Mainstream Media maliciously misportrays him as being otherwise he’d never give such soldiers the right to save their lives.

To the contrary, the Russian leader is a committed humanitarian who’s generously giving this chance to his country’s foreign military opponents that the US-led West never gave to their own. That in and of itself speaks volumes about which side in the New Cold War truly believes in human rights.

Nevertheless, those who stubbornly continue to cling to the fascist ideas that were already defeated by their own forefathers and the rest of the Soviet family several generations ago will suffer the exact same fate as Ukraine’s World War II Nazi allies, both Hitler’s Germany and its local collaborators at the time.

Under no circumstances can President Putin allow another fascist threat to rise along his country’s borders. Unlike Stalin during World War II, this time he’s preemptively putting a stop to it before everything gets out of hand since he said that “the showdown…cannot be avoided” this time either.

This shows what an astute student of history the Russian leader is that he truly learned from the past and therefore is doing his utmost to ensure that his precious country doesn’t once again experience the unprecedented suffering of starvation and genocide from that dark time.

It remains unclear how many members of the UAF heeded the Russian head of state’s appeal though unconfirmed reports alleged that a considerable number of them have done so. If true, that would be perfectly understandable and speak to the fact of how unpopular the ruling Ukrainian regime is.

Fraternal people shouldn’t ever fight against one another, let alone at the behest of foreign powers that brainwashed a particular side with fascist ideology against their own brothers. Ukrainians have been exploited as Hybrid War weapons against their own people and Russia for far too long.

President Putin’s appeal to the UAF was noble, humanitarian, and showed the profound level of respect that he has for the Ukrainian people. The US-led West will do everything in its power to paint him as a “bloody ethno-supremacist dictator” but anyone who reads his own words knows that’s just a lie.