Just an “intermediate step”? Russian General Andrei Mordvichev predicts the expansion of the war of aggression against Ukraine.
Moscow – He wanted to expressly “emphasize” this, as he said at the time: “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. “It is an integral part of our own history, our culture, our intellectual space.” This was the reasoning given by Russia’s president Wladimir Putin the invasion of Ukraine in his speech to the nation in February 2022. Now one of his top military commanders is following suit. Lieutenant General Andrej Mordwitschev describes the war in the U.S. as an “intermediate step”. Ukraine; and opens up room for speculation.
Mordvichev recently appeared on state television with his statement Rossiya 1 to see; a post on the shows an excerpt Platform X (formerly Twitter). The filmed conversation between him and the Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov is subtitled with English passages; then be the one Ukraine war just a chapter of a larger operation. Ukraine “is just the beginning,” as he tells Solovyov.
Putin wants to return to the world stage with a Greater Russia
Possibly the beginning of a new Russian empire within former borders – for example those during the time of the Tsarist Empire. In addition to today’s Russian territory, this included most of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, a large part of Poland, areas in northeastern Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, including Alaska, which was sold to the USA in 1867. Or the Russian military is again thinking within the boundaries of the Warsaw Pact, the military alliance between the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, what was then Czechoslovakia and Hungary that existed until 1991.
Whatever the limits: Putin wants to return to the world stage with a Greater Russia. And his herald is a military heavyweight: Lieutenant General Andrei Mordwitschev has been in command of the “Center” military district since the beginning of 2023 and thus between 30,000 and 50,000 men. According to the Russian news platform RBC Mordvichev led the Russian units in the offensive in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which was captured after months of massive shelling and siege of the Azov steelworks.
Russia clearly threatens: “We have time”
At the end of 2022, the historian Karl Schlögel had this to say t-online expressed his shock that the political actors in Russia change, but the aggressive rhetoric remains the same sharpness. He quoted a statement by Putin confidant Dmitri Medvedev: “We have time.” Schlögel agreed t-online: “These words are a tremendous threat. Whatever happens, no matter how many Western politicians assure Ukraine of their support, in the end Moscow will decide. That is the unmistakable message.”
General Mordwitschev has now repeated this threat once again: He sees time as a powerful ally of his army and his mission. Mordvichev too Rossiya 1: “I think the war will take a lot of time. … Of course it will take longer.”
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