This Is Not A Real War

Find out here why this is not a war for Russia and why it is better so

Apr 19, 2025

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Welcome to the peace initiative for Ukraine in which you can contibute by raising your awareness as well as your consciousness^[+] and spirit to the modes^[+] of neutrality^[*^], decency, respectfulness, wisdom^[*^], objectivity, mastery of the intellect, surrender (ego and mind to God’s will), and finally peace (inner then outer). To properly grasp everything, we recommend reading the articles of this peace initiative in the order that we^[*^] designed it, which is listed in the Contents. So if you haven’t read the previous articles, we urge you to do it, please.

The armed conflict in Ukraine goes under different names – Russo-Ukrainian war, Russian invasion, Russian Special Military Operation (SMO)^[+], NATO proxy war in Ukraine^[*^]^[+], war in Ukraine, the project Ukraine, etc.

It is a de facto and not a de jura war, nevertheless, we will call it a war but it must be said that in military terminology, this is not a war but an armed conflict, especially as long as no side has declared a war or a state of war (like for instance, Israeli President Netanyahu declared war^[»]^[+] on Hamas and a state of war1 in October 2023) and as long as battles are confined in just one state. Consider why Zelensky, who eagerly calls it a war, did not declare either war or a state of war. Maybe the paperwork got lost in the mail? Or perhaps declaring war messes with the foreign aid application forms? 😊

Russians referred to it, therefore, as an armed conflict or special military operation because in Russian military doctrine and glossary, war is when battles occur in more than just one state and/or when they declare a war.

Russia has not declared a war with Ukraine as it is not against Ukrainian nation but against a fascist regime^[*^] that came to power by force in 2014 and since then has been oppressing, terrorizing, and killing Russian ethnic minority. Russia is not at war with Ukraine but with the left liberals and globalists who are in charge of Ukrainian neo-Nazis^[+], Kyiv regime2, and NATO states.

On 22 March 2024, Kremlin spokesman called a state of war^[+] after battles were no longer confined in just one state with Ukrainians invading Russia from 12-21 March. Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has turned into a war after the West became a participant in the conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with national media. Since in September 2022 Russia got four new federal subjects that must be protected and fully liberated from Kyiv’s forces, battles were already then no longer confined in just one state, which is why Russians used the term “war” since then but only unofficially – after all, Ukraine and the world did not recognize those regions as Russia, thus fighting was officially confined in just Ukraine.

Peskov explained^[+] that despite the conflict “de facto turning into a war,” legally it remains classified in Russia as a special military operation and that nothing has changed in that regard.

This started out as an armed conflict rather than a war because according to the Russian military glossary^[+]:

·      armed conflict – an armed conflict of a limited scale between states within the territory of just one state (in this case, just Ukraine)
·      local war – a war in which military actions are conducted within the borders of opposing states (in this case, in both Ukraine and Russia), and which primarily affects the interests of only these states (territorial, economic, political, and others) in which the parties pursue limited military-political goals
·      regional war - a war involving several states of one region, waged by national or coalition armed forces, during which the parties pursue important military-political goals
·      large-scale war - a war between coalitions of states or the largest states of the world community, in which the parties pursue radical military-political goals. A large-scale war does not occur simply by just one state attacking another but is a result of the escalation of an armed conflict, a local or regional war involving a significant number of states from different regions of the world. This war requires the mobilization of all available material resources and spiritual forces of the participating states

In other words, according to the Russian Military Doctrine^[+]^[+] (rather than Putin's whims, as some in the West want us to believe) the current level of the military conflict is not termed as a war but as an armed conflict because it is waged within the territory of just one state, Ukraine. Russians would have termed it a local war if it were waged within the borders of both opposing states – Ukraine and Russia (not counting occasional terrorist drone attacks) and if it primarily affected the interests of only Ukraine and Russia (with only limited military-political goals being pursued) but this is clearly not the case as both, the geographic and objectives scope do not fit the definition.

According to International humanitarian law (IHL)^[+], the current conflict in Ukraine is legally classified as an international armed conflict (IAC), not as a war, and is governed by the four Geneva Conventions (GCs), reflecting customary international law, and Additional Protocol I (API), which both Ukraine and Russia are parties to. IACs are armed conflicts typically between two or more states characterized by “intense military violence”. For instance, the IFRC^[+] (the world’s largest humanitarian network) and The Geneva Academy^[+] do not call it a war but international armed conflict (IAC).

One of many other pieces of proof that Russians genuinely do not take their special military operation or armed conflict as a real “war” is the fact that they haven't turned to war economy. War economy is the organization of a country's production capacity and distribution during a time of conflict. Although, NATO states MSM try to push the narrative that Russia is now a war economy, all the indicators prove otherwise. A war economy must make substantial adjustments to its consumer production to accommodate defense production needs. Russia has naturally increased military production but it has not made any substantial adjustments to its consumer production, no rationing whatsoever, no price controls, and no conscription for civil defenses, as it is usual in wartime economies. Just the fact that, despite the war and all the draconian sanctions (by mid-March 2025, 28.595^[+] sanctions against Russian individuals and legal entities), in 2023, Russia's economy grew^[+] and Russia became Europe's No. 1 economy (in terms of GDP at purchasing power parity^[+]), it is enough of evidence to bright people that Russia can't be in a wartime economy modus. Russia has been living under a sanctions’ regime for quite a long time, for over a decade, and it has sufficiently adapted to it, and surpassed everyone's expectations in NATO countries. It is quite amazing, if we may humbly admit it.

Initially, the Kremlin regarded its intervention in Ukraine as an “armed conflict” and pursued important military-political goals without involving several states of one region, therefore its classification as a “special military operation” was genuine. This is also evident by the fact that Russia engaged only a small military unit of less than 100.000 troops^[+]^[+]^[+](not counting the ethnic Russian troops in Ukraine). For a war with a 44 million population of Ukraine, they would surely need a much bigger army.

However, if Kyiv and NATO states escalate it and keep invading Russia and NATO gets involved beyond their current status as mere supporters or suppliers by sending their own troops to Ukraine, this will mark the end of the “Special Military Operation” and the start of a large-scale war between NATO and Russia. Russia will then mobilize more troops (possibly declare war to be able to lawfully send its conscripts outside Russian new borders), perhaps involve allies, and pursue radical military-political goals, such as a new multi-polar world order and contraction of NATO or a new security architecture of Europe. It seems to head this way.

If the armed conflict in Ukraine were a local war for Russia, it would be already over! If Russia had used all or most of its 2 million^[+] servicemen currently on active duty, this war would have been short and over by now. Especially if Russia had dragged other countries into it, like Ukraine and the US did, in a regional war.

Putin described^[+]^[+] the ongoing conflict as a “great tragedy” that is essentially a “civil war” between brothers instigated by the US and its allies (“divide and rule” ploy).

Under Russian law, without a formal declaration of war by the Russian State Duma, the Russian Federation is prohibited from using conscripted soldiers outside of Russian borders, and has to rely on contract soldiers beyond its borders. Hence by law the operation was referred to as a "Special Military Operation," and not called a "war." As a response to NATO involvement and the Ukrainian government's use of terrorism, assassinations, and sabotage in Russia^[+] and Russian new territories, in September 2022 the Russian State Duma began a debate to upgrade the status of the special operation to a midlevel between a "special operation" and a “full mobilization war”, referred to as a counterterrorism operation which could legally extend outside the borders of the Russian Federation.

NATO and Ukrainian authorities call it an illegal war, which is debatable^[*^], but it may be illegal to call it a war as it is not a war from a legal perspective (no declaration of war and). What is certainly illegal is NATO’s involvement in it, especially NATO officers and troops on the ground, which they cowardly conceal by dressing their soldiers in Ukrainian uniforms and labelling them as “volunteers”.

Besides all the other previous cases, the military forces of the United States and NATO in Syrian territory were in clear violation of International Law, therefore it is then highly hypocritical from them to condemn Russia for engaging its military forces in Ukraine where millions of Russian citizens live and which was historically part of Russia. NATO Alliance is illegally waging a proxy war^[*^] against Russia since 2014 even though NATO members did not need to “defend” themselves because Russia never attacked or threatened any country of the so-called “defensive” NATO alliance.

However, even a NATO’s head of state called^[+] it a "military operation", not a “war”. Maybe he just didn't want to commit to the full wartime budget increase? 😊

Officially speaking, since no side declared a war, this should not be called a war but an armed conflict, as long as battles between two states are conducted within the territory of just one state. But since this is NATO’s proxy war against Russia^[*^]^[+], the West rightfully insists on calling it a “war”, especially due to the scale of the conflict as Ukraine and the US dragged many countries into it. So, the declaration of the G20 Summit in 2023 termed it as war in Ukraine (rather than aggression or war against Ukraine).

Declaring war was a norm of international politics for millennia, but the United Nations Charter, which prohibits both the threat and the use of force in international conflicts, made the declaration of war somewhat redundant as a formal international legal instrument. Like sending a formal RSVP after you've already crashed the party and eaten all the canapés 😊. Also, the proliferation of codified jus in bello3^[+], the law of war governing belligerent conduct, has created disincentives for states to issue formal declarations of war. Complying with these laws of war is extremely costly and restrictive, thus one way for states to limit the costs and evade the restrictions of international humanitarian law is to avoid admitting they are in a formal state of war by refraining from declaring war. Although war may be waged and declared for a just cause or just intentions, such as self-defense, denazification, or a response to injustice or a threat, war declarations have come to be perceived as markers of aggression and maximalist aims, which is another reason most states refrain from declaring wars.

For those who try to justify Zelensky's decision not to declare war in terms of such declarations being obsolete or useless, here are recent examples^[+] to counter that argument:

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu formally declared a state of war^[+]^[»] when Palestinian Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 (still at war^[+])
Western Sahara independence group declared war^[+] on Morocco in November 2020 (still at war^[+])
Azerbaijan declared state of war^[+] in some regions after Armenian attacks in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region in September 2020^[+]
In the Syrian Civil War:
-   For Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, this was a civil war, so, no need to declare it
-   Syrian rebel groups declared war^[+] on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
-   Turkey declared war^[+] on Syria
-   Al-Nusra Front declared war^[+] on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
-   President Trump's Declaration of War Against Syria in 2017^[+]
Egypt officially declared ‘state of war’^[+] Islamic State (ended in January 2023^[+])
Sudan declared war^[+] on South Sudan in 2012
Georgia declared 'state of war'^[+] over South Ossetia in 2008 (ended in a week^[+])
Dozen other states declared wars since WWII^[+]
In the previous European war – the Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001), there was no formal declaration of war because the Serbian position was that it needed not be declared as it was a civil war. The Croatian motivation for not declaring war in the case of Croatian War of Independence^[+] (1991–1995), was that President Tuđman believed that Croatia could not confront the JNA4 directly and did everything to avoid an all-out war.

It is not made officially known why Zelensky did not declare war against Russia or at least a state of war in Ukraine but without official declaration of war in the legislative field of Ukraine, under the international law, all attacks on Russian soil by Ukrainian government are regarded as terrorist attacks and Ukraine is then a terrorist state.

A declaration of war would not be useless and would indeed have relevance within the domestic law of the belligerents and of neutral nations as well as within international law in the context of Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil, which are without a declaration of war against Russia legally termed as illegal terrorist attacks, which makes Ukraine a terrorist state. Watch this video^[»] where Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Chaplyga explains how by international law, from a legal perspective, if there is no state of war introduced in the legislative field of Ukraine (Ukraine has not declared war with/against Russia nor a state of war), then the actions of Ukraine on the territory of Russia are considered terrorism.

When it comes to the relevance of war declaration within Russian domestic law, for instance, it is against the Russian law to use conscripts outside the Russian border without a declaration of war. However, Russia has managed to mobilize enough contractors or volunteers that it does not need conscripts outside Russian borders (including newly annexed regions). All Russian conscripts are currently fighting within Russian borders as Russia annexed south-eastern Ukraine and so, these regions are part of Russia now. Most likely, if NATO escalates by sending its troops or if Ukraine or foreign/NATO mercenaries engage in battles on Russia’s pre-war soil, then Russia would declare war as aligned with Russian military doctrine and its terminology.

From a military perspective, this is not a war because Russia attacked just a small part of Ukraine from which it retreated in September 2022, and the rest of Ukraine, including the local governing authorities, invited Russia to intervene to protect them after being terrorized for many years by the Kyiv regime5. Local Ukrainian authorities requested Russian military support.

So, Russia did no invade the four regions of Ukraine that it currently occupies and defends but was invited by the local authorities and residents to stop the humanitarian crisis (14.000^[+] civilians dead, 54.000 wounded and 2,6 million displaced/fled from homes) caused by a civil war in Donbas^[+]^[+] and to defend the human rights (for life and self-determination) of the natives in Ukrainian breakaway territories that, like recently Kosovo and many other former Yugoslav and Soviet republics, legally6 declared independence in 2014 and were mostly ethnic Russians. All those regions that Russia seized since 2022 were regions where local authorities and local people requested Russia to intervene, to protect and liberate them from Kyiv regime that has been shelling them and terrorizing them for 8 years.

It is important to highlight an indisputable fact: In February 2022, Russia did not start a war but a special military operation (SMO), and the evidence for it is a very small number of Russian troops entering Ukraine. If Russia had the intention to start a war or occupy Ukraine which had around 44 million people altogether, out of which the military age group 16-59 were more than 10 million^[+] among Ukrainians (with a standing army of 265.200 that grew to more than a million defense troops by July 2022, according to then-Defense Minister Reznikov^[+]^[+]), obviously, it wouldn't have attacked on 24 February 2022 with less than 100.000 troops^[+]^[+]^[+] (even though the West inflates the Russian numbers, Politico reported^[+] that Russia had attacked with more than half of the 150.000 troops it had arrayed around Ukraine, which means more than 75.000 troops; in February 2022, Guardian reported^[+] that according to the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, there were in total 135.000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s border), plus 40.000 Donbas and 5.000 Wagner troops. To occupy the whole of Ukraine, Russia would have needed at least 3 million troops^[»]!

For comparison, when Germany started WWII in 1939, it attacked Western Poland (much smaller population^[+] and size^[+] than Ukraine) with an army of 2,2 million troops. This is clear proof that Russia had no intention to start a war in Ukraine. Even to this day, although Russia realized that NATO is fighting a proxy war^[*^]^[+] against it by using Ukrainian troops rather than its own, Russians have not mobilized nearly as many troops as would be needed for a war (145.000 Russian troops were up against 1.070.000 Ukrainian troops7).

This is not a “full-scale” war for Russia although since 2022, Ukraine and NATO authorities like to call it that way to make a distinction from the war that has been going on since 2014 there between Ukraine and ethnic Russians in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on a smaller scale. However, this cannot be called a “full-scale” war when the biggest country in the world Russia sent only less than 100.000 troops^[+]^[+]^[+]. It could had been called a “full-scale” war if Russia had declared a war or sent a significant number of troops, otherwise as far as Russia is concerned, it started out as a special military operation. They mobilized 300.000 new troops in September 2022 but most of them were not sent into the combat zone before February 2023. Even then, this has been far from being a “full-scale” war for Russia. Just like Putin said^[»] in July 2022, in late May 2023, Russia's ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, said it again^[+]^[»] "We haven't even started yet."

The military operation in Ukraine was not a war from Russia’s perspective because Russians did not seek to destroy or conquer Ukraine but to defend themselves. War means destroying the enemy – physically, materially, and politically. Despite the claims from Western propaganda, Russia has shied away from inflicting mass civilian casualties^[*^]. Ukrainians should pray for Putin to stay in power because of his incredible restraint (which Ukrainian and NATO propagandists portray as weakness pointing at how slow and ineffective his military is), because if hardliners like Medvedev or the likes of Prigozhin would take over, they would not be as restrained. Putin's Russia has not tried to destroy Western ISR platforms, Ukrainian government infrastructure, or Ukrainian political officials. In short, Russia has only played a few of the military cards it holds. Going to war means you go all in.

In an interview in May 2023, the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed^[+] Russia acts slowly in Ukraine because it carries out special op, not war and due to Moscow’s humanitarian concern for the preservation of Ukrainian cities and human lives: “We are not waging a war. It is a totally different thing to wage a war: it is a total destruction of infrastructure it is a total destruction of cities. We are not doing that. We seek to preserve the infrastructure; we seek to preserve human lives.”
The fact that a few towns were indeed destroyed is not because Russians wanted to destroy them but because Ukrainians wanted to destroy them as they would rather destroy a town than leave it to Russians intact. Why would Russians destroy a town, which they want to occupy and where majority of residents are ethnic Russians? Seems counterintuitive, unless their long-term plan involves becoming the world's leading supplier of rubble 😊. Only towns with ethnic Russians got destroyed, which is telling who destroyed them! They got destroyed only because Ukrainians fought for them until they destroyed every building they had to leave. According to the last Ukrainian Census, there are 1.344 urban populated places and 28.621 rural populated places in Ukraine, and Ukrainians alleged that Russians destroyed nine towns but they omit to mention that it was Ukrainians who destroyed them and that those towns were populated mostly by ethnic Russians or as they like to call them “Russian collaborators”. Like Russian-speaking Mariupol, which Russia already rebuilt after Ukrainian military destroyed most of it.
The fact that Russians are preserving human lives is evident by daily civilian casualties reports from the UN (OHCHR^[+]^[+]^[+]^[+][+]) and Wikipedia^[+]^[+], which attest that on average only less than 10 civilians get killed per a day in all of Kyiv controlled territories with around 30 million8 civilians in 28.0959 towns and villages. Compare that to Israeli^[+] and American wars^[+] to realize how Russia is preserving human lives. Besides, it must be noted that many of the killed Ukrainian civilians were not even killed by the Russians but by Ukrainians themselves, either as accidents due to Ukrainian air-defense missiles or debris, or as false flag operations, or to kill ethnic Russians or Russian collaborators10 either as revenge, or to blame Russians for cruelly killing civilians, or as a warning to others who might express pro-Russian attitude.

Russia started its SMO to force Ukraine to end the 8-year long Donbas war and to force Kyiv to negotiate a peace deal after Ukraine failed to adhere to the diplomatic means of two Minsk Accords^[+]^[+] (2014 and 2015) that were supposed to stop the war against ethnic Russians in Donbas^[+]^[+].

With or without a declaration of war, just like Ukraine has done, Russia or Russian President Putin may mobilize or recruit as many conscripts, contractors, and volunteers as needed and divert as many resources toward the military campaign as needed, therefore there is no point in the public discussing it. When haters have no other valid arguments to smear Putin, they resort to ridiculing him for not designating his special military operation as a war, which only tells us how virtuous he is when something as insignificant as this is at the height of their smear campaign.

From a Ukrainian and Western perspective, Russia’s military operation in Ukraine is perceived as an act of war but for some undisclosed reason, Ukraine has not declared war on Russia. This discrepancy alone should deny Ukraine the right to call it a war. Russia, on the other hand, did not declare war and is congruent and consistent in not calling it a war (except in the context of saying that the US and NATO are waging a proxy war^[*^]^[+] against them). It is hypocritical or incongruent of Ukraine to call it a war without a war declaration. Why call it a war, when you do not want to declare war?! There is much ridicule among Ukrainians and pro-Ukrainians about Putin not declaring war (but instead a special military operation), so this begs a question then, how come there is no ridiculing among the same people, too, about Zelensky not declaring war?

To further highlight the question of double standards, Ukraine is calling Russia a “terrorist state” for conducting attacks in Ukraine but how about Ukraine conducting terrorist attacks against civilians on Russian soil, including Moscow, borderline regions of Belgorod^[+], Kursk, Bryansk^[+], and as well as Pskov, etc. – wouldn't that make Ukraine a terrorist state, too, and a hypocrite as well? If Ukraine is claiming to only defend itself from an alleged aggressor, then all Ukrainian aggressions and offensives in Russia are nothing but terrorist attacks, given that Ukraine did not declare war or a state of war.

Nevertheless, to somewhat satisfy those for whom and in whose favor this peace initiative is predominantly created – Ukrainians and pro-Ukrainians, we will use the term “war in Ukraine” throughout this peace initiative as it is used in the 2023 G20 summit’s declaration, thereby being officially accepted by the Western powers.

In the declaration of the 2023 G20 Summit in India, it was termed as war in Ukraine, which is why we use that term, too. All references to previously alleged Russian aggression against Ukraine featured in the 2022 joint statement at the G20 summit in Bali were removed^[+]^[+] as they turned out to be incorrect and unaccepted. India’s G20 representative Amitabh Kant said^[+] there was “100% consensus from all countries” on all paragraphs in the declaration, which further proves that there is a consensus that Russia is not an aggressor against Ukraine.

Thank you for reading this article and participating in this peace initiative by raising your awareness and, hopefully, your consciousness and spirit. To properly grasp everything, we^[*^]recommend reading the articles of this peace initiative for Ukraine in the order that we designed it, which is listed in the Contents. So if you haven’t read the previous articles, we recommend that you do.

When you are ready, please proceed to the next article in this series: First Things First

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