Nearly 200 million citizens of Russia and Ukraine will celebrate the beginning of the new year tonight.
Alongside the festivities, dinners and fireworks displays, many of them will look to the year 2022 with undisguised concern.
For the first time since the end of World War II, the threat of impending war rests on both Slavic states.
True, in 2014 Russia had already invaded neighboring Ukraine, conquered the Crimean peninsula and later encouraged and armed the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine - but then these actions were done in secret.
This time the threat of war is visible and blatant.
It was placed on the table like a loaded pistol, and it seems like it's only a matter of time before the first shot is heard.
About two weeks ago, the Russians issued an official demands document, which, although not entitled "Ultimatum," certainly sounded like one.
Demands have been made to the United States, NATO and the European Union, and to sum them up, the Kremlin is demanding that the West re-grant it the privilege enjoyed by the USSR - to control vast areas of control beyond Russia's borders, and to effectively control what happens there.
In fact, Russian President Putin is seeking an arrangement that is similar to the division of the world after the joint victory over the Nazis, albeit on a smaller scale.
Recognize that the former Soviet Union (such as Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and others) is in our area of control - and have pulled your hands out of that area, Moscow calls, signaling that if the demand is not met - Russia has another way of enforcing its will.
If anyone is wondering what the other way is, Putin's official and semi-official spokesmen have taken care to dispel the fog.
"It can be said that Russia will take its demands seriously early next year," Sergei Markov, a former Russian MP who is considered one of the Kremlin's loyal mouthpieces, told Israel This Week.
"Unfortunately, if the ultimatum is rejected, a severe crisis awaits us, which includes war activity."
Markov further argues that Putin's attitude toward the West is extremely tough.
"He tells them: 'You deceived us, when you promised not to expand the ranks of the NATO alliance and not to accept the organization of Eastern European countries, so now you have to provide Russia with security guarantees.'
His general idea is that we have suffered enough from the impudence of the West.
"Remember that when Putin was asked how an order could be given to shoot at Ukrainians, he did not answer that he would never give such an order."
The year 2021 "excelled" in a series of attacks on the country's political freedoms.
A Russian soldier standing near Rostov, Photo: AP
Escalation in rhetoric
Markov is right: Putin himself has greatly escalated the degree of hostility in Moscow's accepted discourse towards Ukraine.
It started a few months ago, when the president adopted the notion that Ukrainians are part of the Russian people and not a people in their own right.
Until then, such statements were the lot of more marginal elements in the Russian political elite, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky, chairman of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, one of the handful of parties represented in the Duma, the Russian parliament.
In the case of Zhirinovsky, not a day goes by without a call to conquer, subdue and crush Ukraine, in formulations that are only becoming more and more radical.
His statements were dismissed on the assumption that he had no influence on the decision-making processes in Moscow anyway, but forgot to mention that the Kremlin often uses him and his big mouth to inflate experimental balloons.
Zhirinovsky and his ilk are part of Russia's oiled propaganda apparatus, which is aimed primarily at domestic purposes - they pumped up and spread the word of Russia's re-expansion over the former Soviet territories, until the idea became almost universal in Russian society.
The discourse on the impending war has become a bon-ton in the text programs of the state television channels in Russia.
The facilitators and guests of these programs tend to call the Ukrainian government a "neo-Nazi regime," accusing it of suppressing the Russian language and slandering it with plots of various kinds and species, the sole purpose of which is to create the image of the enemy.
Recently, to the usual accusations a new, extremely dangerous tone was added: the Russian Ministry of Defense has stated that American private military companies have brought chemical weapons to eastern Ukraine in order to produce provocations against Russia.
The bizarre claim was not substantiated, but it did its part - portraying Ukraine as a direct threat to Russia and as someone plotting an aggressive move.
The ground was prepared for a step up in the official rhetoric, and this was indeed not long in coming.
About a week ago, at the traditional press conference to mark the end of the year, Putin called Ukraine an "artificial state" and sailed in describing the injustice inherent in the inclusion of "traditional Russian territories" in its territory.
It is not difficult to guess the natural continuation of the chain of arguments he is trying to build: if there is no Ukrainian people, and if his artificial state has taken over Russian territories, then any war move that will return the lost sons to the Russian state is justified and blessed.
President of Ukraine Zalansky // Photo: AFP,
The aggravating power of the Kremlin is not only projected outward.
The year 2021 "excelled" in a series of attacks on the political freedoms still left for the citizens of Russia inside.
The end of the year, how symbolic, was accordingly: Russia's Supreme Court ordered the closure of the activities of Memorial, a voluntary association that operated from the late Soviet Union and worked to expose the crimes of the totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union and to commemorate its victims.
A few months earlier, Memorial was classified as a "foreign agent," but the regime was not content with that and led to the complete dissolution of the association.
The prosecution's representative at the hearing justified this in a language that seemed to have been taken from Soviet times, and claimed that "Memorial" creates a false image of the Soviet Union as a terrorist state.
At the same time, the Russian army concentrated considerable forces along the long border of its country with Ukraine.
Several Western media outlets have been quick to publicize the alleged plans for a future Russian attack, without specifying whether they were leaks from a qualified source or whether the experts' assessment.
Divorce cuts to Moscow?
Either way, the publications talked about an attack on Ukraine from three directions: from the Crimean peninsula, from the border region between Ukraine and Russia and the territory of Belarus. It should be noted that there is currently no Russian military presence in Belarus, but the presidents of the two countries have not ruled out the possibility that if NATO continues to locate its missile systems in Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Romania, Belarus will invite Russians to deploy its military missiles. In its territory.
Markov is quick to reassure that a military flare-up is not expected during the New Year celebrations. "Everyone will wait for the results of the expected round of negotiations between Russia and the United States in Geneva, which is set to begin in early January," he said
. At the same time, he does not miss the opportunity to mock the Ukrainian leadership. He said that on the day of Putin's press conference, all the top Ukrainian officials - from President Vladimir Zalansky to members of parliament, governors and mayors - canceled the entire planned schedule.
"They sat staring at the screens and watching the real president's press conference, to learn or at least to guess from Putin's words their fate," Markov remarks, honestly expressing the attitude of his country's rulers towards the neighboring country.
Russia is not threatened by Ukraine and is not afraid of NATO's expansionist intentions. What really frightens the Kremlin's rulers is a scenario in which Ukraine gives a divorce to Moscow and finally chooses the path of democracy and joining Western countries. Russian citizens ask themselves - and their rulers - why they are doomed to live under a regime with such different characteristics.
A network of sabotage
Surprisingly, in Ukraine in particular the tone of the threats heard from the Kremlin does not cause panic, nor even special excitement.
Maybe the Ukrainians just got used to the big and arrogant neighbor to the east, maybe they learned a lesson from the previous large concentration of Russian army on the border that ended in nothing, and maybe they want to convey self-confidence in the face of the darkening clouds from the east.
The prevailing opinion in Kiev is that the Russians do not want war, and the atmosphere of threats fueled by Moscow is nothing more than a sham.
In the midst of a campaign of intimidation in the Western media, which predicted the Russian invasion and even pinpointed exact dates, Ukrainian Army Chief of Staff Valery Zlozhny shared with him more reassuring information. Some, "he said, adding nothing.
"This does not mean that the Ukrainians are sitting idly by and not preparing," explains Shimon Briman, a historian and journalist, an expert on Ukraine.
"In case of a Russian invasion, they have prepared, among other things, a network of sabotage units, designed to operate in the enemy's rear. To operate such a network when necessary, weapons and ammunition slicks were planted across the country. And inflict significant damage on them. "
Max Bozensky, a member of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, President Zalanski's ruling party and one of the faction's prominent spokesmen, says he is "convinced there will be no war, and when I speak of war I mean something bigger and more global than the Russia-Ukraine conflict." . He said, "The war on the brink of war serves both Russia and the United States, in order to promote the reorganization of world power relations, a kind of 'Yalta 2.0 settlement', similar to the Yalta conference that took place towards the end of World War II and set out a regional division. the effect of powers and the rules of the game between them. "
According Boz'nski," the US is headed for a series of diplomatic contacts with Russia, after which new rules will be defined, and the American government handy refine the urgency of the task through the atmosphere threat of war,"In order to present to the American voter the future settlement with Moscow as an achievement and a great victory of the Biden administration."
Bozanski believes that the immediate goal of the Russians is far more modest than the bragging of Zhirinovsky and his comrades who dream of rehabilitating the Soviet Union within its wide borders: "They intend not to allow Ukraine to join NATO, but are not interested in forcibly annexing Ukraine to the Russian state.
For them, it is enough whether alongside them Ukraine will be friendly or at least neutral.
"They should not and are not able to conquer, swallow and digest a country with a population of 40 million people (most of whom will be hostile to the Russian occupier) and with shaky and ruined infrastructure."
Coordinated?
Putin and Biden,
NATO as a stabilizing factor
In today's international system, influence and control are done in other ways, and not necessarily through military occupation.
"The Russians have invested enormous resources and efforts in building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, whose role is to lead Russian gas to Europe, while the military offensive against Ukraine will certainly lead to painful economic sanctions, including the shutdown of this pipeline," says Bozanski.
Russia's strategic goal, according to Bozensky, involves integrating into the global fabric of forces, in which it will play a significant role, and in which it will be taken into account as is taken into account, for example, in France or Germany.
"For that to happen, Moscow is interested in selling the gas to Western Europe and enjoying the dissolution of the investment and a price that is 10 times higher. In my opinion, Russia's real destination is Western Europe and not Ukraine, and the means is commercial and not military."
Is it possible to conclude from your words that Ukraine can be calm in the meantime?
"It is difficult to feel really calm when the concentration of about 120,000 troops is on the border, and yet I see on the horizon a trend of stabilization in relations between Russia and the United States, and as a result also the prevention of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
"The division of the world into new spheres of influence, which we are heading towards, presents Ukraine with another challenge: how to ensure that Ukraine and its interests are not sacrificed in the global settlement between the powers."
He said that if the agreement stipulates that Ukraine will not be able to join NATO, Western countries, led by the United States, will have to offer another mechanism that will ensure Ukraine's well-being and integrity.
"The solution can come in the form of the 'Budapest Memorandum 2.0' - unlike the original Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which guaranteed Ukraine's independence and sovereignty over its Ukrainian concession to its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, and violated by the Russians in 2014. This time a practical and effective mechanism will be required."
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