Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the Russian dictator, has said that the task of the aggressor country on the so-called�demilitarisation� of Ukraine has allegedly been largely fulfilled.
Source: Peskov in an interview with RT Arabic, according to TASS propaganda news agency Quote: "Indeed, Ukraine was heavily militarised at the time of the beginning of its [special military operation, as the Russian Federation calls the war against Ukraine – ed.]. And, as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin said yesterday, one of the tasks was to demilitarise Ukraine.
In fact, this task is largely completed. Ukraine is using less and less of its weapons. And more and more it uses the weapons systems that Western countries supply it with."
... so is that an excuse for the Kremlin to get the fuck out of Ukraine ?
I mean, the only way for Putin to politically survive a retreat is to convince Russians that this catastrophic failure was actually a huge success, and their sons didn't die for nothing.
Seing them push a narrative that they have already achieved what they came there for is therefore kind of uplifting. If the Russians could leave Ukraine without losing face they would have done it months ago, and this seems to be the beginning of the effort to create such an opening.
Of course nobody in the West is going to buy it (well, almost nobody, without pointing any fingers), but much like the rest of Russian propaganda we don't really need to either. The only limit is which lies the Russian people are willing to believe, and for once I actually want them to believe this one - or at least I want the Kremlin to believe they believe it.
If they pull out under the pretense that Ukraine has been demilitarized, and Ukraine turns around and joins NATO, they have egg on their face. Any withdraw would still have to be predicated on assurances that Ukraine won’t join NATO, from Russia’s perspective, or they won’t be able to claim success.
One has to have been living in Russia (for years) to know (or to feel the temperature) of what they will swallow from the Kremlin. Propaganda is pushed if the Kremlin believes it will be tolerated.
This was literally the shitty joke I was thinking about when reading the headline "Well, we demilitarized them from soviet weapons". You really can't think absurdly enough for those guys.