Ukraine's recent provocations in the Sea of Azov, the imposition of the martial law in Ukraine after the Kerch Strait incident and the bellicose rhetoric from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about the war with Russia have triggered numerous discussions about a possibility of an open armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
It appears that it is Ukraine that wants to start the armed conflict with Russia. According to experts' estimates, the Ukrainian army will suffer not just disastrous, but fatal consequences should the war between Russia and Ukraine break out. Nevertheless, analysts agree that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the entire Ukrainian system need this conflict for their own self-preservation.
There are three important factors that indicate the imminence of the war between Russia and Ukraine. These factors can already be found in Ukraine.
1. The Ukrainian authorities run toxic propaganda to dehumanise the population of Russia, demonise the Russian leadership to make the Ukrainian population believe that "we are right and the Russians are wrong." The Ukrainian people are led to believe that the war, if it starts, will be the war to defend Ukraine against Russia's aggression. In other words, it will be a just and morally justifiable war for Ukraine.
2. The organisation of provocations in order to obtain sacred victims - the people who will be killed by the aggressive enemy. It goes about victims among Ukrainian military personnel, border guards and other defenders of the Fatherland, whom the Ukrainian authorities will subsequently declare national heroes.
3. Attempts to secure international support in demonstrating the need for war at the time when political methods have been exhausted. Clearly, the Ukrainian government, or rather, Petro Poroshenko, needs to extend the martial law regime, which implies both the abolition of elections and the ban on public opposition activities. Poroshenko needs to substantiate the legitimacy of martial law with the help of hostilities.
Ukraine also needs to involve the West in this conflict - NATO with the US at the head. However, after the incident in the Kerch Strait and Poroshenko's appeal to NATO to strengthen the naval presence of the alliance in the Black Sea, NATO responded that the current military presence of the alliance was enough. Translated from the diplomatic to common language, the response from NATO means that alliance is fed up with Ukraine's problems.
Major General Yuriy Vladimirov believes that Poroshenko could start a provocation near the Crimean border and he will not fear Russia's powerful response, because Kiev found USA's reaction to the Kerch incident quite convincing.
However, US officials could only limit themselves to a number of statements and a move to cancel Trump's meeting with Putin. Washington did not take any real action in the Black Sea area.
Nevertheless, such a development has a number of serious constraining factors within Ukraine. First of all, the Ukrainian military could see from the armed incident in the Kerch Strait that Poroshenko was ready to send them for slaughter for the sake of his own political ambition.
To crown it all, neither the Ukrainian population, nor politicians were thrilled with the imposition of martial law in the country and the indefinite delay of elections. Many in Ukraine saw the militaristic rhetoric only as a dirty political plan. All this brings up a possibility of another revolution in Ukraine that will overthrow the sitting Ukrainian government.
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