Russian forces intervened in Ukraine from three sides: from Belarus, from the Russian border and from the recovered Crimea.

Moscow did not want to take aggressive action from the beginning but there was a “ground zero” point a few days ago that prompted Russian President Putin to take this decision as there was no other choice.

After all, from the beginning we had drawn attention to the fact that Russia would not intervene in Ukraine unless the Russian-speaking populations were at risk, and that is exactly what happened.

The Ukrainians, despite Moscow‘s “goodwill” moves to start withdrawing forces from the Rostov regions near the Ukrainian border, went on the offensive with heavy artillery bombardments against the Russian-speaking Donbas.

Indeed, the Russian-speaking people, in the light of these attacks, decided to evacuate large areas from the civilian population.

It was clear that the Ukrainians had been persuaded by foreign centres to do everything in their power to get Russia involved in the war in Ukraine.

But even this, at the beginning, Putin tried to “pass it by“.

But the Ukrainians went even further, bombing a Russian outpost on the Russian border line and attempting to deploy a group of Ukrainian saboteurs on Russian territory in the Rostov region.

A group that was completely annihilated by a Russian unit.

Putin then understood that the “foreign-directed” challenges of the Ukrainians would escalate daily and must be radically addressed.

That is, the reason for their creation had to be eliminated, which was Kiev‘s ability to produce such challenges.

A Kiev, which, we recall, has concluded strategic agreements with Ankara for the transfer of know-how to the Turkish defence industry.

Two days ago, pronews. gr published an article by its director, Anastasios Gouriotis, in which it was obvious that an upcoming Russian intervention and a change of attitude in the mind of the Russian leader were announced.

Because the Russian leader‘s “state of mind” was to avoid any conflict with Ukraine.

Even now, it places particular emphasis on not harming Ukrainian civilians and even asks Ukrainian soldiers to understand and weigh up who caused this escalation of war.

Putin is not “correcting Lenin‘s mistakes” as many have said, but he is correcting NATO‘s mistakes and he will not stop doing so. . .

In 2014, a very serious security issue erupted for Russia: the elected pro-Russian Ukrainian president V. Yanukovych was overthrown in a lasting coup and Ukraine was lost to Russia for good, with the new leadership under Poroshenko calling for immediate NATO membership.

It is well known that if Ukraine is lost from Russian influence, then Russia will also lose the game on the global geopolitical chessboard.

The American equivalent would be in Mexico drinking vodka and eating caviar. . .

NATO would now reach outside the. . . Rostov and the historic battlefield of the largest tank battle in history in Kursk in WWII!

“So how is NATO different from Hitler?” the hardline Russian generals asked, echoing the concern of Russian citizens about the leadership‘s inability to prevent the overthrow of Yanukovych.

Then Vladimir Putin, and a month before Yanukovych was overthrown, seeing the imminent threat of losing Crimea and its naval and air bases, decided to act:

As soon as the coup plotters seized power in Kiev, three days before Good Monday 2014, unmarked military forces appeared all over Crimea.

Crimea was “occupied by the Russians without opening their noses” by means of covert operations, i. e. with unmarked forces, which collaborated with the local Russian-speaking people who, as we said before, constitute 95% of the country‘s inhabitants.

A referendum was immediately declared, with 95% of citizens voting in favour of union with Russia.

This was followed by uprisings of the Russian-speakers in the Donbass region, Donetsk and Lugansk.

The two regions were declared “Independent People‘s Republics” and were attacked by Ukrainian units of conscripts from western Ukraine (the only regions where Russian-speakers are a limited minority in Ukraine) and neo-Nazis of the Azov Order (Ukraine had a tradition of pro-Nazism, as in WWII many Ukrainians had seen the Germans as their saviour from Stalin‘s regime) and then Moscow also sent covert aid, crushing after a year of fighting the neo-Nazis and the Ukrainian regular troops.

With instantaneous actions Moscow prevented NATO from gaining control of the Crimean peninsula, created a permanent focus of tension for the Ukrainian regime in eastern Ukraine, secured control of the eastern Black Sea and sent a message to the US and NATO about what would happen if it went ahead with Ukraine‘s NATO membership, a country that Putin considers “Russian territory” and an “artificial state“, as he made clear in his speech yesterday.

From the very beginning of the crisis, all the analysts and columnists of pronews. gr and defencenet. gr had stressed that if the Russian-speaking populations were not threatened with extermination from Kharkiv and Mariupol to Odessa, Putin would not act militarily.

But that is exactly what happened. The Russian-speaking populations of Donbass were threatened, while the other Russian-speakers living in Ukraine were oppressed in order not to “disturb” them.

In that case, if they are threatened with genocide, a “Ukraine Storm” type operation will be launched and nothing will be left standing.

On the issue of sanctions, history shows that when a state is sanctioned and embargoed, it comes out stronger in the end, as it turns to domestic production.

Especially in the food production sector, Russia has made leaps and bounds in the last eight years.

What is not being replaced is Russian gas.

Everyone can find oil anywhere. Natural gas, no. Or at least not in sufficient quantities…

The decision to suspend the start-up of Nord Stream 2, as a product of US pressure, was completely expected. Russia has already replaced the quantity it would have sold to Germany by selling to energy-hungry China.

Where will Germany get cheap gas?

Because of Russian gas, Berlin became independent of the US and became an economic superpower.