A pseudo-state to be called "Yuzhnaya Rus" ("Southern Rus") in the Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russian army is in the Kremlin's plans, at least according to an investigation by Radio Svoboda's (Liberty) "Drawing" program.
The plans to create the new state are presented in the "Manifesto of the South Russian People's Assembly," say the investigative journalists, who found that the drafting of the document involved people from the leadership of the ruling United Russia party, Vladimir Putin's party.
Sources in "Draft" also said that the "manifesto" was delivered to the chairman of the executive committee of United Russia, Andrei Turchak, and then to Dmitry Grislov, who is an adviser to Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeyev. The latter is, of course, the same person who has been prosecuted by the US authorities. Malofeyev's activities also pass through Greece with the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to set up a pro-Russian channel.
The "Manifesto" begins with the explanation that the state of Ukraine after the overthrow of the "legitimately elected president" in 2014 [THIS IS VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH] "lost its legitimacy within the borders of the USSR [UKRAINIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC]" and "in response to terrorism and the totalitarian imposition of the ideology of fascism and banderofism", the South Russian People's Assembly announces its decision to take power into its own hands and establish "the new state of Southern Russia".
In this document it is stated. The document further states that the so-called "Southern Russia" is the "successor" to the Kiev Novgorod, Zaporozhian Sikh, the so-called "New Russia of Catherine the Great" and the USSR. "We are building our state on the basis of understanding the historical and genetic affinity and unity of the Triadic Russian people, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians, fraternal friendship and mutual assistance," the authors of the manifesto stress.
Orthodoxy is called "the foundation of our culture and identity", while the Ukrainian language is called a "dialect". "We recognize the Russian language, as well as the Ukrainian dialect, as the mother tongue and language of international communication, with equality of all languages and nationalities," the text reads.
The main goal of "Southern Russia" the authors call "the achievement and protection of peace", "the complete elimination of Nazism and Bandera". And they announce a "referendum."
"We recognize the freedom and the right to express the will of the people of Crimea, we recognize the choice of Donbass. The state of Southern Russia will also exist and act after the transition period on the basis of the universal, open to observers of all countries, the will of the peoples through a referendum, the text of the "manifesto" states. At the same time, the document does not specify precisely on which territories of Ukraine it is planned to "form" "Southern Russia."
In 2014 after the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Donbass, plans of the so-called "Novorossiya" (New Russia) on territories to be detached from southern and eastern regions of Ukraine began to be discussed in Russia.
The situation on the ground
The Russian military in recent weeks has focused on the eastern part of the country, the Donbass and Luhansk regions and the territories captured west of them. From the northern part, the Kiev region, it has been withdrawing for weeks.
But even in these provinces, the attacks have lost momentum, a British expert tells the BBC. The battle will be over in 2-4 weeks, says Mike Martin, because the Russians have run out of forces and the Ukrainians are planning a counterattack. He even believes the Russians have lost the only chance they had to take the region.
Russia has withdrawn "heavily wounded" units from Kiev and has attempted to regroup them for the battle in the east. But they have still not achieved much.
However, fears that Moscow has not abandoned its goal of making Ukraine an "enclosed" country, i.e. completely cutting it off from the Black Sea, have not abated at all.
And they were reinforced after new attacks late on Thursday on Mikolaiv, northwest of Kherson and Odessa.
The impression that Vladimir Putin will now focus exclusively on the eastern front to control the Donbass is in fact belied, as after the capture of Mariupol, Russian troop movements towards the Zaporizhzhya region in the centre of Ukraine have been observed. It is also indicative that there was bombing as far away as Kiev on Thursday night - indeed, it occurred after the visit of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Along with fears that the Russian army will also move to the southwest, however, there is renewed concern about the possibility of an invasion of Transnistria, a region of Moldova with an autonomous regime and a strong pro-Russian element that Moscow considers to be oppressed by the country's authorities. The Moldovan government has for this reason only recently abandoned neutrality in the war in Ukraine and sided with Kiev and the West.
The prophetic(?) map
There is also the probably not accidental revelation by the deputy commander of Russia's Central Military District.
Russia plans to gain full control of Donbass and southern Ukraine as part of the second phase of the invasion, as Rustam Minekayev reveals, Russia, however, has broader military objectives.
In this context, according to what Russia's state news agencies reported the other day, Moscow plans, after occupying the entire eastern region of Donbass, to connect it to the Crimean peninsula (which it annexed in 2014) and then move on to Transnistria, thus occupying the entire southern Ukraine and excluding it from the Black Sea.
Source: protothema.gr
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