Complete Victory over Putin’s Russia Not Only Possible but Vital, Skobov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – Those in the West who argue that a complete victory over Putin’s Russia is impossible and that a negotiated settlement is the only way forward either don’t understand the situation or are willing to act as advocates for the Kremlin’s position, Aleksandr Skobov says.

            That is because the goals Putin has set for Russia in this war are “imperialist, illegal and amoral” and include “the legitimation of the ‘right’ of Russia to annex the territories of neighboring states, the ‘right’ to set their domestic and foreign policy, and the deprivation of their physical possibility of resisting any new military action by Russia,” he continues.

            Therefore, Skobov says, “even the partial achievement by the aggressor of the goals he has set will lead to the final destruction of the international-legal order which has existed since 1945.” Putin has given up on none of these, and the West must recognize that what he represents is a repetition of the threat Hitler posed (graniru.org/opinion/skobov/m.287229.html).

            Western leaders must “convince their own people that an existential war with Putin’s Russia is going on, one that precisely repeats the path of Nazi Germany and represents exactly the same threat to civilization. It is war about what the world order will be,” one based on law, equality and freedom” or one based on “crude, harsh and bald force.”

            In such a war, “there cannot be a compromise. It can end only with the complete defeat of one of the sides.”  Skobov says that “a complete defeat of Putin’s Russia is one in which he does not achieve a single one of its goals by the results of the war” – and in the first instance, the expulsion of Russian occupiers from all Ukrainian territory.

“For the rapid defeat of the aggressor,” he continues, “in the first instance the lifting of the last taboos on supplying Ukraine of all kinds of heavy attacking weapons must be lifted” and the speed with which such weapons are supplied to Ukrainian forces must be accelerated so that they can achieve that end.

To be sure, “this constitutes ‘an escalation of the conflict,” Skobov says, and at present the West is not doing what needs to be done out of fear of that. But such fears is allowing the Russian dictator the time to pursue his goals and put Ukraine and the West in an ever more difficult position.

That must change. The Kremlin shouldn’t be allowed to draw “’red lines,’” he says. The Free World should by making clear that there are things Russia may do that will force the West to intervene directly and massively; and it should do so without  waiting for Russia to invade a NATO country, something it may very well do if that isn’t made clear.

Those “experts” who say that “’Putin will never allow Russia to suffer defeat’ are traitors. They are the voices of the clear or hidden enemies of the free world” because “defeats are usually inflicted without anyone asking the permission of those on whom they are to be inflicted.”