Russia’s Testing the Waters

A Change in Plans is Being Probed

It starts with Solovyev, on his famous talk show, suggesting lightly a change in the history of the past three years that denies reality but strives to create a new one, a softer one, one that Russian citizens can digest. “Russia never intended to conquer Ukraine; it was only a police action to enforce peace, which is obvious if you look at how many troops we have in Ukraine. Not nearly enough to conquer,” he claims. In retrospect, yes, they had nowhere near enough troops, but they did think they would take Kyiv. We have the battle plans; we saw the 50km column, we watched the paratroopers fail Khostomel, and the dress uniforms in the vehicles for a parade that never happened. They thought Kyiv would capitulate.

Now, they are erasing the history we all saw with our own eyes and ears and rewriting it to serve a new narrative. It was only a police action — therefore, there are no territorial goals. Therefore, when Russia begins to retreat in the near future, this will be an organized withdrawal, everything going as planned, police action completed, area pacified, nothing to see here, folks, please move along. It was never territorial, which is why we didn’t build the Surovikin line of dragons' teeth and trenches, land mines, and checkpoints. It was a police action. We had to disarm Ukraine by delivering them 2,500 armored vehicles, destroying half our functional air force, losing the Black Sea fleet, and crippling or killing a half million men and counting. Ukraine is harmless now…