On February 24, the day Russian troops crossed the borders to Ukraine, I wrote about the potential end state of the operation:
Looking at this map I believe that the most advantageous end state for Russia would be the creation of a new independent country, call it Novorussiya, on the land east of the Dnieper and south along the coast that holds a majority ethnic Russian population and that, in 1922, had been attached to the Ukraine by Lenin. That state would be politically, culturally and militarily aligned with Russia…

On August 4, the People’s Militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic reported that more than 300 shells, including those equipped with PMF-1 (Lepestok) anti-personnel mines, were fired from the Ukrainian side on the territory of the Republic…