Is Russia winning the special military operation in Ukraine? What has changed since 2022?

When we launched the special military operation, our objective was to stop the war that the West had already unleashed at that time against us through the Nazi regime in Kiev.

We were honest in what we did and expected the other side to demonstrate the same. In February 2014, the West, represented by France, Germany and Poland, helped broker a deal between the then-President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, and the opposition for calling a snap election and forming a national unity government. European Union (EU) representatives signed this deal, but the very next morning the opposition decided that it couldn’t care less about the deal or the EU in general and went on to perpetrate a government coup. They announced a government of the victors instead of forming a national unity government. Their first initiative was to terminate the official status of the Russian language in Ukraine. However, at least 80 per cent of Ukrainians think, live and communicate in Russian.

This is how the war started. The republics that refused to accept the government coup were labelled as terrorists. Meanwhile, the Donbass republics had to experience a real war, artillery strikes, with air forces bombing peaceful cities. You know how it happens. Signing the Minsk Agreements took a whole year with Germany and France, with Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Francois Hollande acting as guarantors. The United Nations (UN) Security Council approved the Minsk Agreements. There was a belief that having these agreements implemented would serve our interests. The West has recently acknowledged that their only objective while signing the Minsk Agreements was to supply more weapons to Ukraine.

The war was quite long in the making and has been waged for a long time too. The West has introduced its usual tools including sanctions, blackmail and threats. In late 2021 and early 2022, the Kiev regime clearly opted for settling what it called the Donbass issue by force. We decided to defend our own security, since Nato has been trying to draw Ukraine into its ranks and already had plans to set up military bases on its territory, including on the Sea of Azov, which is on Russia’s doorstep. We launched the special military operation to protect Russians who have been living on this land for centuries since Catherine the Great added them to the Russian crown. The Russian military commanders and industrialists defended and developed this territory, while the Kiev regime outlawed these people by banning the Russian language across the board, be it in education, media, culture, or even everyday communications.

Today, we can hear Western leaders recognising that Ukraine has been facing an increasingly challenging situation. This is quite an elaborate way of saying that their idea of inflicting what they call a strategic defeat on us is doomed to fail. Western politicians understand this, still the West has been searching for the weapons it delivers to Ukraine across the world. Over 50 countries have been contributing to these efforts.

Earlier, the Americans were in charge, now they have appointed Nato as the focal point. It holds its Ramstein-format meetings. Several days ago, Pentagon chief