Operation UNTHINKABLE -1945
Operation UNTHINKABLE, a plan for the Allied attack on the Soviet Union in 1945
The events and facts discussed in this article seem incredible and unthinkable. They are really hard to believe, just as it is hard for a normal person to believe in the possibility of betraying someone he considered an ally and a friend. And yet it was.
For a long time, this information was kept secret and only now it is becoming available. It will be about a plan for a surprise attack on the USSR in the summer of 1945, developed by the Allies, a plan that was foiled almost at the last moment.
The Third World War was to begin on July 1, 1945 with a sudden strike by the combined forces of the Angosaks on the Soviet troops. Now few people know this, as well as how Stalin managed to thwart the plans of the "probable allies", why we were forced to hastily take Berlin, against whom the British instructors in April of the 45th trained the undisbanded divisions of the Germans who surrendered to them, why Dresden was destroyed with inhuman cruelty in February 1945 and who exactly the Anglo-Saxons wanted to intimidate with this.
According to the official models of the history of the late USSR, the true reasons for this were not explained in schools - then there was a "struggle for peace", a "new mUshlenie" was already maturing at the top and the legend of "honest allies - the Usa and Great Britain" was welcomed in every possible way. And not many documents were published then - this period was hidden for many reasons. In recent years, the British began to partially open the archives of that period, there is no one to fear - the USSR is no longer there.
In early April 1945, just before the end of the Great Patriotic War, Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of our ally Great Britain, ordered his chiefs of staff to develop a surprise strike operation against the USSR - Operation Unthinkable. It was granted to him on May 22, 1945 on 29 pages.
According to this plan, the attack on the USSR was to begin following Hitler's principles - with a sudden blow. On July 1, 1945, 47 British and American divisions, without any declaration of war, were to deal a crushing blow to the naïve Russians who did not expect such boundless meanness from the Allies. The strike was to be supported by 10-12 German divisions, which the "allies" kept undisbanded in Schleswig-Holstein and in southern Denmark, they were trained daily by British instructors: they were prepared for war against the USSR. In theory, the war of the combined forces of Western civilization against Russia was to begin - later other countries were to participate in the "crusade", for example, Poland, then Hungary ... The war was to lead to the complete defeat and surrender of the USSR. The ultimate goal was to end the war approximately where Hitler planned to end it according to the Barbarossa plan - on the Arkhangelsk-Stalingrad border.
The Anglo-Saxons were preparing to break us with terror - the savage destruction of large Soviet cities: Moscow, Leningrad, Vladivostok, Murmansk, etc. with crushing blows of waves of "flying fortresses". Several million Russian people were to die in the "fire tornadoes" worked out to the smallest detail. So Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo were destroyed... Now they were preparing to do it with us, with our allies. The usual thing: the most heinous betrayal, extreme meanness and savage cruelty - the hallmark of Western Civilization and, especially, the Anglo-Saxons, who exterminated as many people as any people in human history.
Dresden after the bombardment of the "fire tornado" technology. The Anglo-Saxons wanted to do the same with us.
However, on June 29, 1945, the day before the planned start of the war, the Red Army suddenly changed its location for the treacherous enemy. This was the decisive weight that shifted the scales of history - the order to the Anglo-Saxon troops was not given. Prior to this, the capture of Berlin, which was considered impregnable, showed the power of the Soviet Army and the enemy's military experts were inclined to cancel the attack on the USSR. Fortunately, Stalin was at the helm of the USSR.
The naval forces of Great Britain and the United States then had absolute superiority over the USSR Navy: in terms of destroyers by 19 times, by battleships and large cruisers - by 9 times, by submarines - by 2 times http://www.respublika.info/4440/history/article22384/). Over a hundred aircraft carriers and several thousand units of carrier-based aircraft against zero from the USSR. The "probable ally" had 4 air armies of heavy bombers that could strike crushing blows. The Soviet long-range bomber aircraft were incomparably weaker.
In April 1945, the Allies presented our troops exhausted and exhausted, and our military equipment exhausted to the limit. Their military specialists were greatly surprised by the power of the Soviet Army, which it demonstrated during the capture of Berlin, which they considered impregnable. There is no doubt that the conclusion of the great historian V. Falin is correct: Stalin's decision to storm Berlin in early May 1945 prevented World War III. This is confirmed by recently declassified documents. Otherwise, Berlin would have been surrendered to the "Allies" without a fight, and the combined forces of all Europe and North America would have fallen on the USSR.
Even after the capture of Berlin, plans for a treacherous strike continued to be developed in full swing. They were stopped only by the fact that they realized that their plans had been revealed and the calculations of strategists showed that without a sudden blow it would not be possible to break the USSR. There was another important reason why the Americans objected to the British - they needed the USSR to crush the Kwantung Army in the Far East, without which the US victory over Japan by its own forces was in question.
Stalin had no way of preventing World War II, but managed to prevent a third. The situation was extremely serious, but the USSR won again without flinching.
Now in the West they are trying to present Churchill's plan as a "response" to the "Soviet threat", to Stalin's attempt to seize all of Europe.
"Did the Soviet leadership at that time have plans for an offensive to the shores of the Atlantic and the capture of the British Isles? The answer to this question is no. This is confirmed by the law adopted by the USSR on June 23, 1945 on the demobilization of the army and navy, their consecutive transfer to peacetime states. Demobilization began on July 5, 1945 and was completed in 1948, the Army and Navy were reduced from 11 million to less than 3 million people, the State Defense Committee, the Headquarters of the Supreme Command were abolished. The number of military districts in 1945-1946 decreased from 33 to 21. The number of troops in East Germany, Poland and Romania was significantly reduced. In September 1945, Soviet troops were withdrawn from northern Norway, in November from Czechoslovakia, in April 1946 from the island of Bornholm (Denmark), in December 1947 from Bulgaria.
Did the Soviet leadership know about the British plans for war against the USSR? This question can probably be answered in the affirmative... This is indirectly confirmed by a prominent expert on the history of the Soviet armed forces, Professor D. Erickson of the University of Edinburgh. In his opinion, Churchill's plan helps to explain "why Marshal Zhukov unexpectedly decided in June 1945 to regroup his forces, received an order from Moscow to strengthen the defenses and study in detail the deployment of the troops of the Western Allies. Now the reasons are clear: obviously, Churchill's plan became known to Moscow in advance and Stalin's General Staff took appropriate countermeasures" (Oleg Alexandrovich Rzheshevsky Military Historical Studies http://militera.lib.ru/research/rzheshevsky1/01.html)
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A brief "squeeze" from the materials of the interview with our largest expert on this issue, Doctor of Historical Sciences Valentin Falin:
It is difficult to find in the past century a politician equal to Churchill in his ability to confuse strangers and his own. But the future Sir Winston was especially successful in terms of Pharisaism and intrigues regarding the Soviet Union.
In messages addressed to Stalin, he "prayed that the Anglo-Soviet Union would be the source of many benefits for both countries, for the United Nations and for the whole world," and wished "complete success to the noble enterprise." This referred to a broad offensive by the Red Army along the entire eastern front in January 1945, hastily prepared in response to the plea of Washington and London to help the Allies in crisis in the Ardennes and Alsace. But that's in words. In fact, Churchill considered himself free from any obligations to the Soviet Union.
It was then that Churchill gave orders to store captured German weapons with an eye to their possible use against the USSR, placing the surrendered soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht under the division in the state of Schleswig-Holstein and in Southern Denmark. Then the general meaning of the insidious venture started by the British leader will become clear. The British took under their protection German units, which surrendered without resistance, sent them to Southern Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. In total, about 15 German divisions were stationed there. Weapons were stockpiled, and personnel were trained for future fights. In late March and early April, Churchill gave his staffs the order: to prepare Operation Unthinkable - with the participation of the USA, England, Canada, Polish corps and 10-12 German divisions to begin hostilities against the USSR. World War III was supposed to break out on July 1, 1945.
Their plan clearly stated: the Soviet troops at this moment would be exhausted, the equipment that participated in the hostilities in Europe would be worn out, food supplies and medicines would come to an end. Therefore, it will not be difficult to throw them back to the pre-war borders and force Stalin to resign. We were waiting for a change in the state system and the split of the USSR. As a measure of intimidation - the bombing of cities, in particular, Moscow. According to the plans of the British, the fate of Dresden awaited her, which the Allied aviation, as you know, corresponded with the ground.
American General Patton, the commander of the tank armies, directly stated that he did not plan to stop at the demarcation line along the Elbe, agreed at Yalta, but to go further. To Poland, from there to Ukraine and Belarus - and so on to Stalingrad. And to end the war where Hitler did not have time and could not finish it. He called us "the heirs of Genghis Khan who need to be expelled from Europe." After the end of the war, Patton was appointed governor of Bavaria, and soon removed from office for sympathizing with the Nazis.
General Patton
London long denied the existence of such a plan, but a few years ago the British declassified part of their archives, and among the documents were papers relating to the "Unthinkable" plan. There's nowhere to dissociate...
I emphasize that this is not speculation, not a hypothesis, but a statement of a fact that has a proper name. It was to be attended by American, British, Canadian forces, the Polish Expeditionary Force and 10-12 German divisions. Those who were kept undisclosed, they had been trained by English instructors a month before.
Eisenhower in his memoirs admits that the
Second Front already at the end of February 1945 practically did not exist: the Germans rolled back to the east without resistance. The tactics of the Germans were as follows: to hold, as far as possible, positions along the entire line of Soviet-German confrontation until the virtual Western and real Eastern Fronts closed, and American and British troops, as it were, took the baton from the Wehrmacht formations in repelling the "Soviet threat" hanging over Europe.
Churchill at this time in correspondence, telephone conversations with Roosevelt is trying to convince at all costs to stop the Russians, not to let them into Central Europe. This explains the significance that the capture of Berlin had acquired by that time.
It is pertinent to say that the Western Allies could have moved east somewhat faster than they had if the headquarters of Montgomery, Eisenhower and Alexander (the Italian theater of operations) had better planned their actions, more competently coordinated forces and means, spent less time on internal squabbles and the search for a common denominator. Washington, while Roosevelt was alive, for various reasons was in no hurry to put an end to cooperation with Moscow. And for Churchill, "the Soviet Moor did his job, and he should have been removed."
Remember, Yalta ended on February 11. In the first half of February 12, the guests flew home. In Crimea, by the way, it was agreed that the aviation of the three powers would adhere to certain lines of demarcation in their operations. And on the night of February 12-13, the bombers of the Western Allies wiped Dresden off the face of the earth, then went through the main enterprises in Slovakia, in the future Soviet zone of occupation of Germany, so that the factories did not get us intact. In 1941, Stalin proposed to the British and Americans to bomb the oil fields in PloieÅŸti using the Crimean airfields. No, they didn't touch them then. They were raided in 1944, when Soviet troops approached the main center of oil production, which had been supplying Germany with fuel throughout the war.
One of the main targets of the raids on Dresden was the bridges over the Elbe. There was a Churchillian attitude, which was shared by the Americans, to detain the Red Army as far as possible in the East. In the briefing before the departure of the British crews, it was said: it was necessary to clearly demonstrate to the Soviets the capabilities of the Allied bomber aviation. That's what they demonstrated. And, more than once. In April of the forty-fifth, Potsdam was bombed. Destroyed Oranienburg. We were notified - the pilots were mistaken. It seemed that they aimed at Zossen, where the headquarters of the German Air Force was located. A classic "distracting statement" that was numberless. Oranienburg was bombed on the orders of Marshall and Lehi, for there were laboratories that worked with uranium. So that neither laboratories, nor personnel, nor equipment, nor materials fall into our hands, everything was turned into dust.
Why did the Soviet leadership make great sacrifices literally at the end of the war, then again we have to ask ourselves - was there room for choice? In addition to urgent military tasks, it was necessary to solve political and strategic puzzles for the future, including erecting obstacles to Churchill's planned adventure.
Attempts were made to influence partners by a good example. According to Vladimir Semenov, a Soviet diplomat, I know the following. Stalin invited Andrei Smirnov, then head of the 3rd European Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and concurrently Minister of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR, to discuss, with the participation of Semenov, options for action in the territories allocated to Soviet control.
Smirnov reported that our troops, pursuing the enemy, had gone beyond the demarcation lines in Austria, as they had been agreed at Yalta, and proposed to stake out our new positions de facto in anticipation of how the United States would behave in similar situations. Stalin interrupted him and said, "Wrong. Write a telegram to the Allied Powers." And he dictated: "Soviet troops, pursuing parts of the Wehrmacht, were forced to cross the line previously agreed between us. I hereby wish to confirm that at the end of hostilities the Soviet side will withdraw its troops to the established zones of occupation."
On April 12, the U.S. Embassy, state and military institutions received Truman's instruction: all documents signed by Roosevelt are not subject to execution. This was followed by a command to toughen the position towards the Soviet Union. On April 23, Truman holds a meeting at the White House, where he declares: "Enough is enough, we are no longer interested in an alliance with the Russians, and therefore we may not fulfill the agreements with them. We will solve the problem of Japan without the help of the Russians." He set out to "make the Yalta Accords as if they did not exist."
Truman was close to announcing the severance of cooperation with Moscow out loud. The military literally rebelled against Truman, with the exception of General Patton, who commanded the US armored forces. By the way, the military also thwarted the "Unthinkable" plan. They were interested in the Soviet Union entering the war with Japan. Their arguments to Truman: if the USSR does not act on the side of the United States, then the Japanese will transfer a million Kwantung army to the islands and will fight with the same fanaticism as it was in Okinawa. As a result, Americans will lose only one to two million people killed.
In addition, the Americans at that time had not yet tested a nuclear bomb. And public opinion in the States would not have understood such a betrayal then. American citizens were then mostly sympathetic to the Soviet Union. They saw the losses we suffered for the sake of a common victory over Hitler. As a result, according to eyewitnesses, Truman broke down a little and agreed with the arguments of his military specialists. "Well, if you think so that they should help us with Japan, let them help, but we end our friendship with them," Truman concludes. Hence such a tough conversation with Molotov, who wondered what suddenly happened. Truman was already relying on the atomic bomb.
In addition, the U.S. military, as well as its British counterparts, believed that it was easier to start a war with the Soviet Union than to successfully end it. The risk seemed too great to them - the storming of Berlin made a sobering impression on the British. The conclusion of the chiefs of staff of the British troops was unequivocal: the blitzkrieg against the Russians would not work, and they did not dare to get involved in a protracted war.
So, the position of the U.S. military is the first reason. The second is the Berlin operation. Third, Churchill lost the election and was left without power. And, finally, the fourth - the British military leaders themselves were against the implementation of this plan, because the Soviet Union, as they were convinced, was too strong.
Mind you, not only did the U.S. not invite Britain to participate in this war, it squeezed it out of Asia. Under the 1942 agreement, the LINE of responsibility of the United States was not limited to Singapore, but also concerned China, Australia, and New Zealand.
Stalin, who was a major analyst, brought everything together, said: "You show what your aviation can do, and I will show you what we can do on the ground." He demonstrated the striking firepower of our Armed Forces so that neither Churchill, nor Eisenhower, nor Marshall, nor Patton, nor anyone else would have a desire to fight with the USSR. Behind the determination of the Soviet side to take Berlin and reach the demarcation line, as they were designated in Yalta, there was an extremely important task - to prevent the adventure of the British leader with the implementation of the "Unthinkable" plan, that is, the escalation of the Second World War into the Third. If this had happened, there would have been thousands and thousands of times more victims!
Were such high sacrifices justified in order to bring Berlin under our control? After I had a chance to read in full the original British documents - they were declassified 5-6 years ago - when I compared the information contained in these documents with the data with which I had to get acquainted back in the 50s, much fell into place and some of the doubts disappeared. If you like, the Berlin operation was a reaction to the "Unthinkable" plan, the feat of our soldiers and officers in carrying it out was a warning to Churchill and his associates.
The political scenario of the Berlin operation belonged to Stalin. The general author of its military component was Georgy Zhukov.
The Wehrmacht intended to arrange a second Stalingrad on the streets of Berlin. Now on the Spree River. Establishing control over the city was a daunting task. On the outskirts of Berlin, it was not enough to overcome the Seelow Heights, to break through with heavy losses seven lines equipped for long-term defense. On the outskirts of the capital of the Reich and on the main city highways, the Germans buried tanks, turning them into armored pillboxes. When our units came out, for example, on the Frankfurter Allee, the street led straight to the center, they were met with a heavy fire, which again cost us many lives ...
When I think about all this, I still have a heart ache , wouldn't it have been better to close the ring around Berlin and wait until it surrendered itself? Was it necessary to hoist the flag on the Reichstag if he had been damned? During the capture of this building, hundreds of our soldiers lay down.
Stalin insisted on the Berlin operation. He wanted to show the initiators of the "Unthinkable" the fire and striking power of the Soviet armed forces. With a hint, the outcome of the war is decided not in the air and at sea, but on the ground.
One thing is certain. The battle for Berlin sobered up many dashing heads and thereby fulfilled its political, psychological and military purpose. And there were plenty of goals in the West, drugged by a relatively easy success in the spring of the forty-fifth year. Here's one of them - american tank general Patton. He hysterically demanded not to stop at the Elbe, but, without hesitation, to move US troops through Poland and Ukraine to Stalingrad in order to end the war where Hitler was defeated. This Patton called us "descendants of Genghis Khan." Churchill, in turn, was also not very scrupulous in his expressions. Soviet people went after him for "barbarians" and "wild monkeys". In short, the "subhuman theory" was not a German monopoly. Patton was ready to start the war on the move and reach... to Stalingrad!
The storming of Berlin, the hoisting of the banner of Victory over the Reichstag were, of course, not only a symbol or the final chord of the war. And least of all propaganda. For the army, it was a matter of principle to enter the enemy's lair and thereby mark the end of the most difficult war in Russian history. From here, from Berlin, the fighters believed, a fascist beast crawled out, bringing immeasurable grief to the Soviet people, the peoples of Europe, the whole world. The Red Army came there in order to begin a new chapter in our history, and in the history of Germany itself, in the history of mankind.
Let us delve into the documents that stalin was instructed to prepare in the spring of the forty-fifth - in March, April and May. An objective researcher will see that it was not the feeling of revenge that determined the planned course of the Soviet Union. The country's leadership ordered to treat Germany as a state that had been defeated, the German people as responsible for the outbreak of war. But... no one was going to turn their defeat into punishment without a statute of limitations and without a term for a decent future. Stalin implemented the thesis put forward in the forty-first year: Hitlers come and go, but Germany, the German people will remain.
Naturally, it was necessary to force the Germans to contribute to the restoration of the "scorched earth", which they left behind in the occupied territories. To fully compensate for the losses and damage caused to our country, all the national wealth of Germany would be lacking. To take as much as he could, without hanging the life support of the Germans themselves on his neck, "to loot more" - in such not too diplomatic language, Stalin guided his subordinates in the matter of reparations. Not a single nail was superfluous in order to raise Ukraine, Belarus, the Central regions of Russia from the ruins. More than four-fifths of the production facilities there were destroyed. More than a third of the population lost their homes. The Germans blew up, wrapped 80,000 kilometers of rail track in a corkscrew, even broke the sleepers. All the bridges collapsed. And 80,000 km is more than all of Germany's railways before World War II combined. At the same time, the Soviet command was given firm instructions to suppress the outrages - the satellites of all wars - in relation to the civilian population, especially its female half and children. The rapists were to be tried by a court martial. It was all there.
At the same time, Moscow demanded strict punishment of any sorties, sabotage of the "unfinished and incorrigible", which could occur in the defeated Berlin and on the territory of the Soviet occupation zone. Meanwhile, there were not so few people who wanted to shoot the winners in the back. Berlin fell on May 2, and the "local fighting" ended ten days later. Ivan Ivanovich Zaitsev, who worked at our embassy in Bonn, told me that "he has always been the luckiest." The war ended on May 9, and he fought in Berlin until the 11th. In Berlin, the Soviet troops were resisted by SS units from 15 states. There were Norwegian, Danish, Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourgish and, hell knows what other Nazis...
I would like to touch upon how the Allies wanted to steal Victory Day from us by accepting the surrender of the Germans in Reims on May 7. This essentially separate deal fit into the "Unthinkable" plan. It is necessary that the Germans capitulate only to the Western Allies and be able to participate in the Third World War. Hitler's successor Dönitz at this time declared: "We will end the war before England and the United States, which has lost its meaning, but we will still continue the war with the Soviet Union." The surrender in Reims was actually the brainchild of Churchill and Dönitz. The surrender agreement was signed on May 7 at 2:45 a.m.
Germany's "capitulation" at Reims to the "Allies
It took us a great deal of work to force Truman to confirm the surrender in Berlin, more precisely, in Karlhorst on May 9 with the participation of the USSR and the Allies, to agree on Victory Day on May 9, because Churchill insisted that May 7 be considered the day of the end of the war. By the way, there was another forgery in Reims. The text of the agreement on the unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allies was approved by the Yalta Conference, it was signed by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. But the Americans pretended to forget about the existence of the document, which, by the way, was in the safe of Chief of Staff Eisenhower Smith. Eisenhower's entourage under Smith's leadership drew up a new document, "cleansed" of the Yalta provisions undesirable for the allies. At the same time, the document was signed by General Smith on behalf of the Allies, and the Soviet Union was not even mentioned, as if it did not participate in the war. That's the kind of play that played out in Reims. The document of surrender in Reims was handed over to the Germans before it was sent to Moscow.
Eisenhower and Montgomery refused to participate in the joint Victory Day parade in the former capital of the Reich. They, along with Zhukov, were supposed to host this parade. The planned Victory Day parade in Berlin still took place, but it was hosted by one Marshal Zhukov. This was in July of the forty-fifth. And in Moscow, the Victory Parade took place, as you know, on June 24.
Roosevelt's death turned into an almost lightning-fast change of milestones in American politics. In his last address to the U.S. Congress (March 25, 1945), the president warned that either the Americans would assume responsibility for international cooperation - in implementing the decisions of Tehran and Yalta - or they would be responsible for a new world conflict. Truman was not embarrassed by this warning, this political testament of his predecessor. Pax Americana should be put at the forefront.
Knowing that we would go to war with Japan, Stalin even gave the United States the exact date - August 8, Truman nevertheless gives the order to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. There was no need for this, Japan made a decision: as soon as the USSR declared war on it, it would capitulate. But Truman wanted to show us his strength and so he bombed Japan.
Returning on the cruiser Augusta from the Potsdam Conference in the United States, Truman gives Eisenhower an order: to prepare a plan for waging atomic war against the USSR.
In December 1945, a meeting of foreign ministers was held in Moscow. Truman's first secretary of state, Byrnes, returned to the States and spoke on the radio on December 30, declared: "After meeting with Stalin, I am more confident than ever that a just peace by American standards is attainable." On January 5, 1946, Truman gives him a sharp rebuke: "Everything you have said is nonsense. We do not need any compromise with the Soviet Union. We need a Pax Americana that is 80 percent in line with our proposals."
The war is going on, it did not end in 1945, it escalated into the third world war, only conducted in other ways. But here we must make a reservation. The "Unthinkable" plan failed as Churchill intended it. Truman had his thoughts on the matter. He believed that the confrontation between the United States and the USSR did not end with the surrender of Germany and Japan. This is only the beginning of a new stage of the struggle. It is no coincidence that Kennan, Counsellor at the Embassy in Moscow, seeing Muscovites celebrating Victory Day on May 9, 1945, in front of the American Embassy, declared: "They rejoice ... They think the war is over. And the real war is just beginning."
Truman was asked, "How is a Cold War different from a Hot War? He replied, "This is the same war, only fought by different methods." And it was and is being conducted all the following years. The task was to push us back from the positions to which we had reached. It's done. The task was to achieve the rebirth of people. As you can see, this task is almost completed. By the way, the United States has waged and is waging war not only with us. They threatened China, India with the atomic bomb... But their main opponent was, of course, the USSR.
According to American historians, twice on Eisenhower's desk were orders to launch a preventive strike against the USSR. According to their laws, the order comes into force if it is signed by all three chiefs of staff - naval, air and land. Two signatures were there, the third was missing. And only because the victory over the USSR, according to their calculations, was achieved if 65 million people of the country were killed in the first 30 minutes. The Army Chief of Staff knew he wasn't going to make that happen.
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This should be studied in schools, told to children in families. Our children must learn from the spinal cord that the Anglo-Saxons will always gladly shoot a friend and ally in the back, especially a Russian. It must always be remembered that in the West, fierce zoological hatred hates the Russian People – "Russians are worse than Turks", as it was said in the 16th century. For hundreds of years, hordes of assassins have periodically rolled over Russia from the West to end our civilization and for hundreds of years the beaten creep back and so on until the next time. The same was the case with the Khazars and Tatars, until Sviatoslav made a decision - peace will be only if the enemy is crushed in his lair and the threat is put to an end forever. Ivan the Terrible adopted the same program and as a result, the devastating raids of the nomads, who had tormented Russia for a thousand years, ended forever. Otherwise, the time and place of attack, convenient for him, is always chosen by the enemy. The West is our enemy and will always remain so, no matter how hard we try to please it and negotiate, no matter what alliances we make.
