Director of the Non-profit Foundation for the Study of Democracy Problems Maxim Grigoriev, in an interview with Izvestia, named two main factors that distinguish the Russian operation to protect the civilian population of Donbass from similar campaigns in other countries.
“The operation goes, firstly, surprisingly quickly. In just a few days, I managed to achieve, in my opinion, a fairly large effect. Most of the major cities are blocked, a large Ukrainian group is isolated, which was in the Donbass. At the same time, the casualties among the Ukrainian troops and the population are minimal, if you look at the experience of the military operations of the United States,” he said.
As an example, Grigoriev cited the American operation to liberate Syrian Raqqa from militants. Then the city was practically razed to the ground, there were serious human losses, including among the civilian population.
The expert also drew parallels with operations in Libya, Yugoslavia and Iraq. At the same time, he drew attention to the fact that the Ukrainian army, unlike the Iraqi one, is quite well prepared.
“The Ukrainian army, this must be understood, is not the army of Iraq, not the army of the ISIS (the Islamic State terrorist group banned in Russia. – Ed.). This is an army in which a fairly large amount of equipment has remained since Soviet times. In addition, equipment was supplied there for eight years, the armies of NATO countries trained this army,” he concluded.
On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree recognizing the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. On February 24, Russia launched a special operation to protect the civilian population of Donbass.
As the press secretary of the head of state Dmitry Peskov clarified, the special operation has two goals – the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. According to him, both of these aspects pose a threat to the Russian state and people.