Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. Ukrainians demand civilian government but Russia wants to control the region instead. What is Putin’s motivation?
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, and Vladimir Putin has been the leader of Russia since 1999. Putin is trying to regain Russian territory that was lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Read more in detail here: why did russia invade ukraine.
News by Paul Kirby
caption in the media,
Watch out: Our parents refused to leave Bucha, and then Russia invaded.
With the argument that modern, Western-leaning Ukraine was a continual danger and Russia could not feel “secure, develop, and exist,” Vladimir Putin launched the largest conflict in Europe since World War Two.
But, after thousands of dead in damaged towns and cities and more than 11 million people displaced inside Ukraine and overseas, the questions remain: what is his goal and how will this conflict end?
What was Putin’s objective?
The Russian leader’s primary goal was to invade Ukraine and topple its government, thereby putting a stop to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO. After failing to conquer Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, he shifted his focus to the east and south of the country after a month of failures.
On the day he launched the invasion, Putin informed the Russian people that his purpose was to “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine” in order to defend people who had been subjected to “eight years of bullying and genocide” by Ukraine’s government.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, spoke of liberating Ukraine from persecution. “The adversary has classified me as target number one; my family is target number two,” Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, stated.
Russia’s president refused to call it an invasion or a war, and even made it illegal to do so. It’s better described as a “special military operation.”
Yevgeny BIYATOV/Sputnik/AFP/Yevgeny BIYATOV/Sputnik/AFP/Yevgeny BIYATOV
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Russia’s invasion has been described by President Putin as a “noble” cause.
The allegations of Nazis and genocide in Ukraine are absolutely false, but they are part of a Russian narrative that has been repeated for years. Moscow even claimed that Ukraine was developing a dirty weapon based on plutonium.
However, the international world is increasingly accusing Russia of severe human rights breaches. The United States and Canada go even farther, calling it genocide.
This conflict, however unjustifiable, is a watershed event. “Russia’s future and role in the world are on the line,” said Sergei Naryshkin, Russia’s foreign intelligence head.
The Russian leader’s words today ring hollow after so much destruction: “It is not our aim to take Ukrainian land; we do not seek to impose anything on anybody by force.”
What has changed in Putin’s goals?
Russia stated its major objective a month into the invasion: “liberation of Donbas,” which refers to Ukraine’s eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk. In a battle that started in 2014, Russian proxy troops conquered more than a third of this territory; today, Russia intends to control the whole region.
The Kremlin said that the first phase of the invasion had “largely met” its goals, which it described as significantly diminishing Ukraine’s war capabilities. However, Russia’s retreat from regions near Kyiv indicates that it has dialed down its goals.
“Putin needs a triumph,” argues Andrei Kortunov, the Russian International Affairs Council’s chairman. “At the very least, he needs something to show his home constituency as a triumph.” The 9th of May is typically marked with a Victory Day parade in Russia, and it is commonly seen as a deadline for tangible results.
Russian authorities continue to employ the fictitious language of “denazification,” but they are now concentrating their efforts on capturing the two largest eastern districts and establishing a land corridor running east from Crimea to the Russian border. It’s unclear if they want to take control of Kherson’s whole southern area and expand their grip down Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.
If Putin succeeds in capturing both eastern territories, he is likely to try to annexe them, as he did with Crimea in 2014. He recognized the whole of Luhansk and Donetsk as belonging to Russia’s puppet republics before to the invasion. His Luhansk statelet’s leader even stated that a referendum will be held soon, similar to the widely criticized one in Crimea.
Beyond its military objectives, the Kremlin has proposed a neutral Ukraine as a viable solution.
Is Putin’s neutrality sufficient?
Russia said it was exploring a “neutral, demilitarized” Ukraine with its own army and navy, similar to Austria or Sweden, both EU members, as a viable compromise.
It’s unclear whether or not it would suffice, or what it would imply. Although Austria is neutral, Sweden is a non-aligned country that is contemplating joining NATO.
In exchange for security assurances from friends, the Ukrainians have promised neutrality. Despite this, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that peace negotiations have come to a halt. As a result, Putin may still have aspirations to reintegrate Ukraine into Russia’s area of influence, away from its Western orientation.
Ukraine has increasingly turned to the West, both the EU and Nato, since gaining independence in 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved.
The demise of the Soviet Union was seen as the “disintegration of historical Russia” by Russia’s Putin, who wanted to change that. He has argued that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, ignoring Ukraine’s ancient history and dismissing the country’s independence as a “anti-Russia endeavor.” He said that “Ukraine never had durable traditions of actual statehood.”
His pressure on Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, to not sign a deal with the European Union in 2013 sparked riots that culminated to the president’s ouster in February 2014.
After seizing Crimea in Ukraine’s south, Russia sparked a separatist revolt in the east and a conflict that killed 14,000 lives.
He tore up an unfulfilled 2015 Minsk peace pact as he prepared to invade in February, accusing Nato of jeopardizing “our historic future as a country,” asserting without evidence that Nato members sought to bring war to Crimea.
Is it feasible to reach an agreement?
President Putin has not given up on conversations that have been going on for weeks at a time. However, Austria’s Karl Nehammer, the sole Western leader to see Hitler since the war started, stated he had entered into a “logic of war.”
Despite Russian forces’ crimes on Ukrainian land, Ukraine’s leader has said that he would continue to seek discussions “because Ukraine needs peace We are in the twenty-first century in Europe “..
And he’s already recognized that his nation won’t be allowed to Nato: “It’s a fact that must be acknowledged.”
Ukraine’s presidency of the EPA
We are prepared to go for it in terms of security guarantees and neutrality, as well as our state’s non-nuclear status… This, if my memory serves me well, is why [Russia] initiated the conflict.
President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky
While Mr Zelensky has said that “we don’t want to miss prospects for a diplomatic settlement if we have them,” he has also stated that peace negotiations would be canceled if Russia kills the last Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Mariupol.
Kyiv suggested the following proposals during negotiations on March 29:
- Ukraine would become a “non-bloc” and “non-nuclear” state, with no foreign military facilities or contingents on its soil.
- In the case of an assault, strict, legally enforceable assurances would oblige nations like the United Kingdom, China, the United States, Turkey, France, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Israel to safeguard a neutral Ukraine.
- Guarantor nations would have to convene discussions and come to Ukraine’s defense within three days.
- Ukraine’s accession to the European Union would be granted.
- Ukraine would not join military-political coalitions, and any foreign exercises would be subject to the approval of guarantor countries.
Ukraine’s quest to join Nato (and the EU) is written in the country’s 2019 constitution, so any changes would need a vote some months later.
What about Crimea and the rest of Eastern Europe?
It’s difficult to see how we can get out of this situation. As a result, Ukraine recommends that the future status of Crimea be decided via negotiations over the next 15 years. According to the Kremlin, Crimea is now Russian territory, and the Russian constitution prohibits anybody else from debating its status.
In the east, Kyiv claims that all Russian forces would leave Ukrainian territory, and that the future of Russian proxy-held territories will be decided during a peace conference between the two presidents.
Ukraine will never agree to give up its sovereignty. President Putin, on the other hand, will not want to give up any territorial gains earned during the conflict, particularly because his stated goal is to “liberate” Ukraine’s east.
Concerning Russia’s other demands, Ukraine has never taken Moscow’s call for demilitarization seriously, and its insistence on “de-Nazification” is nothing more than Russian propaganda. “It’s insane,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said. “Sometimes they can’t even describe what they’re talking about.”
President Zelensky has said that he is willing to grant Russian minority language status, as well as that of other neighboring nations’ languages, and that he does not consider this to be a serious problem.
What exactly is Putin’s beef with NATO?
The goal of the West’s 30-member defensive military alliance, according to Russia’s Putin, is to fracture society in Russia and eventually destroy it.
He requested that Nato go back to 1997 and halt its eastward expansion, remove its soldiers and military infrastructure from member nations that joined the alliance after 1997, and avoid placing “attack weapons near Russia’s borders” before of the conflict. That includes Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Baltic States.
The West agreed in 1990 that Nato would extend “not an inch to the east,” but did so nevertheless, according to President Putin.
However, since this was before the Soviet Union’s demise, the pledge made to then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev only applied to East Germany as part of a reunified Germany. “The question of Nato enlargement was never considered” at the time, Mr Gorbachev subsequently stated.
Is Putin planning anything bigger than Ukraine?
If he has, his military defeats in Ukraine may have put an end to any plans to expand beyond the country’s boundaries. His plan to revert Nato to the late 1990s has been thwarted, with Finland and Sweden considering joining the alliance.
Western leaders are no longer fooled by Mr Putin’s readiness to destroy European cities in order to accomplish his goals. President Joe Biden has called him a war criminal, and German and French politicians consider this conflict as a watershed moment in European history.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany says “Putin wants to establish a Russian empire… he wants to radically reshape Europe’s status quo to fit his vision. He has no reservations about employing military force to achieve his objectives.”
“I have very strong concerns that we should be ready for a fresh ultimatum to the West that will be more militarised and hostile than we could have anticipated,” Tatiana Stanovaya of RPolitik and the Carnegie Moscow Center anticipates a spiral towards a new Cold War clash.
EPA is the source of this image.
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Before the conflict, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the battle lines in eastern Ukraine on a regular basis.
More coverage of the Ukraine conflict
What does Russia’s future hold?
The intensity of the Western reaction to President Putin’s invasion has astounded him, and he is enraged. Not only has Ukraine been supplied with weapons, but Russia’s economy is expected to shrink by 10% this year as a result of a slew of sanctions.
The European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western countries have attacked Russia’s economy in a number of ways:
- The assets of Russia’s central bank have been frozen, and major banks have been cut off from the worldwide SWIFT payment network.
- The US has banned Russian oil and gas imports, while the EU wants to reduce gas imports by two-thirds in a year and phase out Russian oil by the end of 2022.
- Germany has put a hold to the approval of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is a big investment for both Russia and European industries.
- Russian airlines have been restricted from flying over the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.
- President Putin and his daughters, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and a number of other people have been sanctioned.
No peace settlement with Ukraine will stop the sanctions, and Vladimir Putin is well aware of this. Instead, Putin has retaliated on Russians who oppose the war. “True patriots will always be able to tell the difference between filth and traitors,” he stated.
Over 15,400 anti-war demonstrators have been arrested, and practically all independent media outlets have been shut down.
There is no real political opposition remaining since it has either departed the country or been imprisoned for years in a strict-regime penal colony, as in the example of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Russia has invaded Ukraine, and Putin wants the country to be part of Russia. However, many do not know what Putin’s motives are for invading Ukraine. Reference: what does russia want from ukraine.
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