Putin’s original goal?
Launching the invasion on 24 February he explained to the Russian people his goal was to de-Nazify and demilitarize our neighbor Ukraine. Russian President declared aim was to protect people subjected to what he called eight years of bullying and genocide by Ukraine’s government. And they have a concern that “Russia’s future and its future place in the world are at stake. The Russian leader’s initial aim was to overrun Ukraine and depose its government, ending for good its desire to join the Western defensive alliance NATO. After a month of war, he abandoned his bid to capture the capital Kyiv and turned his ambitions to Ukraine’s east and south.
Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said “the enemy has designated me as target number one; my family is target number two”. His adviser said Russian troops made two attempts to storm the presidential compound.
Russia’s leader refused to call it an invasion or a war. Moscow continues to coin Europe’s biggest war since 1945 a “special military operation”.
The claims of Nazis and genocide in Ukraine are completely unfounded but part of a narrative repeated by Russia for years.
However, an opinion piece by state-run news agency Ria Novosti made clear that “denazification is inevitably also de-Ukrainisation” – in effect erasing the modern state.
And it is Russia that is now accused by the international community of carrying out war crimes. Several countries including the US and Canada go further and call it genocide.
After so much destruction, the Russian leader’s words ring very hollow now: “It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory; we do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.”
A month into the invasion, Russia pulled back from Kyiv and declared its main goal was the “liberation of Donbas” – broadly referring to Ukraine’s eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. More than a third of this area was already seized by Russian proxy forces in a war that began in 2014, now Russia wanted to conquer all of it.
The Kremlin claimed it had “generally accomplished” the aims of the invasion’s first phase, which it defined as considerably reducing Ukraine’s combat potential. But it became clear from Russia’s withdrawal that it had scaled back its ambitions.
“Putin needs a victory,” said Andrei Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council. “At least he needs something he can present to his constituency at home as a victory.”
Russian officials are now focused on seizing the two big eastern regions and creating a land corridor along the south coast, east from Crimea to the Russian border. They have claimed control of the southern region of Kherson and a leading Russian general has said they have hopes of seizing territory further west along the Black Sea coast towards Odesa and beyond.
“Control over the south of Ukraine is another way out to Transnistria,” said Maj Gen Rustam Minnekayev, referring to a breakaway area of Moldova, where Russia has some 1,500 troops.
Capturing Donbas and the land corridor is a mandatory minimum for the Kremlin, warns Tatiana Stanovaya, of analysis firm RPolitik and the Carnegie Moscow Center: “They will keep going. I always hear the same phrase – ‘we have no choice but to escalate’.”
The question is whether Russian forces have the numbers to press forward. By not declaring this a war, the Kremlin cannot mobilize nationally and military analyst Michael Kofman believes unless that happens Russia’s Donbas offensive is the last it can attempt.
A few weeks into the war, Russia said it was considering a Ukrainian proposal of neutrality, but there have been no negotiations since Kyiv’s offer at the end of March and for now the Kremlin appears set on pursuing its war.
Volodymyr Zelensky had already responded to Russia’s anger over Nato by accepting Ukraine would not be admitted as a member: “It’s a truth and it must be recognized.”
