www.veteranstoday.com By Nauman Sadiq for VT Islamabad
In a long-overdue decision, Russian President Putin after consulting with the National Security Council officially recognized the two breakaway republics of Ukraine, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Subsequently, the Russian parliament unanimously approved the decision and authorized the deployment of Russian peace-keeping forces in the Donbas region.
Putin could have recognized the sovereignty of the breakaway republics as soon as Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. But being a pacifist, he kept waiting for eight years in the futile hope that better sense would ultimately prevail in Kiev.
After it became evident, however, that Volodymyr Zelensky and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko have struck an irrevocable Faustian pact with the NATO devil, he was left with no other choice than to protect Russiaâs paramount security interests at any cost, specifically from the existential threat emanating along Russiaâs western borders after the deployment of the NATO troops, strategic armaments, nuclear-capable missiles, and air force squadrons in the Eastern Europe aimed at Russia, and the NATO forces alongside its regional clients provocatively exercising so-called âfreedom of navigationâ right in the Black Sea and conducting joint military exercises and naval drills.
