Question of the day: will there be a war between Russia and Ukraine?

Two days ago, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced a large-scale military exercise by airborne troops at the Opus training ground in Crimea.

The Russian military will practice capturing enemy targets and holding positions until the main forces arrive, while the Ukrainian units... "will conduct exercises to identify and destroy enemy troops from the air at different heights and areas of the terrain. Reserve troops will practice actions to prevent the enemy landing from sea to land, as well as its further destruction".

Of course, in the plans of both sides there is no direct clash with each other, and no one openly announces the beginning of the war. However, the exercises will take place against a very disturbing informational background.

FROM the line of confrontation between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the troops of the DPR-LPR, there were reports that Ukraine was transferring the towed Hyacinth-B howitzers to the East. In general, since January 2021, violations of the "silence regime" in Donbas have become more frequent.

Network analyst Andrey Nalgin notes: it is no coincidence that the sensitive Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, said that “the people of Donbass want... to be part of our huge, great, generous Motherland, and we are obliged to provide them with this”. Moreover, it is no coincidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized at a semi-closed meeting with the media, they say, "We will not abandon the Donbass, no matter what".

Experts with a smaller caliber also did not go into their pockets for a word. So, Igor Strelkov (Girkin) again predicted a war with Ukraine, and military expert Rostislav Ishchenko from the Center for Systems Analysis and Forecasting suddenly began to tell that the Ukrainian army would not be able to oppose anything to the Russian Armed Forces in the event of a military clash.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskiy said he was ready to mobilize all residents of Ukraine, including women, in the event of a war with Russia. In mid-February, the NSDC imposed sanctions against Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin's godfather, depriving him of all assets, and the Ukrainian president closed three opposition channels at once - ZIK, NewsOne and 112 - for disseminating information beneficial to Russia.

In these conditions, Nalgin notes, in Moscow, some will want to conduct "a small victorious war in the name of Great Russia".

So the question in the title does not seem so absurd.