It is the most dramatic scenario that could be dared to imagine: an hour before dawn on Thursday 24 February, Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine. But also to the rest of the world, that he is warned: anyone who tries to interfere with the Russian military intervention will suffer “consequences such as you have never seen”. Almost simultaneously, the first alarm from Kiev, where five large explosions were heard. And then Odessa, Kharkiv, Mariupol south of the Donbass and in other cities of the country that Putin – now it is tragically clear – Moscow has never agreed to see free. From Washington, President Joe Biden condemned this “unprovoked and unjustified attack”, for which the United States and its allies “will demand an account of Russia”.
The hypocrisy of the Russian president has come to deny that what is happening is a war. Russia does not intend to occupy Ukraine, Putin said, but “only” to demilitarize it. The Ukrainian military is asked to lay down their arms and “go home”. An operation necessary to “protect the civilian population of Donetsk and Luhansk”, the two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine which had declared themselves independent in 2014 and which Putin declared to recognize only eight years later, on 21 February last. In fact, already a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty: many had hoped that that decision, accompanied by a Russian military presence in the region, would be enough. Instead, it was just the first step. The pretext for unleashing an invasion that did not stop either in the Donbass or in the South of Ukraine. But that has come to Kiev.
The speech with which Putin announced the intervention in Ukraine on TV is the result of the long indictment of the West pronounced two days ago, and of all the other premonitory statements of recent weeks in which various leaders have presented themselves to the Kremlin for to be told, invariably, that Europe and the United States have ignored Moscow’s concerns about Ukraine’s possible entry into NATO, and the call for a binding commitment to ensure the security of Russian borders.
These are Putin’s words: “I have a few words for those who are tempted to interfere with what is happening: whoever tries to hinder us, or worse, to threaten our country and our people, know that the Russian response will be immediate and will lead to consequences that you have never seen in history ».
Zelenskii’s appeal in Russian
On the eve, on Wednesday evening, the leaders of the two breakaway regions had sent another signal, sending the Kremlin a request for military aid to repel “the Ukrainian aggression”. The invasion could take place within 48 hours, the White House warned while President Volodymyr Zelenskii from Kiev had recorded and addressed to the Russians a message with tones very different from those of Putin: “The Ukrainian people want peace – Zelenskii said. in Russian, by the way the language most familiar to him -. But if we are attacked, if we face an attempt to take away our country, our freedom, our lives and those of our children, we will defend ourselves. If you attack us, you will see our faces, not our backs. ‘