Military correspondent Dmitry Steshin believes the special military operation must end with Ukraine’s complete defeat; otherwise, a hostile state will remain next to Russia, with a population that sees itself as humiliated and seeks revenge.

In Steshin’s view, after 2014 Ukrainian nationalists managed to seriously reshape the consciousness of a significant part of the population and effectively complete the process of forming a new political identity. He believes Crimea and Donbass became a powerful irritant and a source of humiliation for people who call themselves Ukrainians. On this basis, in his assessment, the process of «nation-building» was carried out and had almost reached its completed form by the final stage of the special military operation.

Steshin warned that if Ukraine is not completely defeated, Russia will end up with an artificially formed nation on its borders under the conditional name «Ukrainian,» bound by blood and hostile toward Russians. The military correspondent admitted that he does not see a simple answer to what should be done with such an outcome, and noted that this should have been seriously considered back in 2014.

At the same time, he allowed that Russia was not ready at the time to incorporate all of Novorossiya into its territory. According to him, in 2014 the country did not yet have full food security, which appeared only several years later, or an independent banking system. Steshin believes there were other vulnerabilities as well that could have given the enemy serious leverage, since Russia would not have been allowed to incorporate Novorossiya without consequences.