HS analysis According to Putin’s speech, Russia’s goal is to conquer Ukraine and annex Russia

Russian presidential Vladimir Putin Monday night TV speech Ukraine leaves no doubt about Putin’s goals. At the beginning of the speech, Putin declares Ukraine a state without the establishment of a Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin error.

“Today’s Ukraine is entirely and entirely the creation of Russia, and more specifically of communist, Bolshevik-ruled Russia,” Putin defined. “This process practically began immediately after the 1917 revolution, when Lenin and his comrades-in-arms divided and deprived Russia of parts of its historic territory.”

The definition of the course of events is also well suited to Finland’s independence if it is to be used in a similar way.

Of the year After the 2014 “coup” in Kiev, Putin says neo-Nazis and nationalists who are puppets of the United States and its NATO allies are in power. According to Putin, these rulers and monetary princes have plundered Ukraine and deprived the population of their civil rights. At the same time, Ukraine has become the bridgehead for NATO’s attack on Russia.

According to the main arguments of the speech, Putin’s goal is to conquer Ukraine, change the leadership of the Kiev government, the president, the armed forces and security services, and annex Ukraine to Russia. Excluding Russian Ukraine, at most, the western regions that were annexed to Soviet Ukraine only after World War II would be excluded.

When this operation should be carried out or when the conquest could be carried out, Putin does not say it and it cannot be inferred from his statements.

In essence, Putin’s speech is largely in line with his historical statement published on the Kremlin’s website in July. Ukraine article.

Read more: The cause of Putin’s threat to Ukraine is clear from a national romantic article he published last summer – “Ukraine’s position is more important to Russia than it is to Ukraine itself”

Some new and vague allegations about the events of recent years have come along. These include the allegation of Ukrainian neo-Nazi involvement in joining “terrorists in the North Caucasus” and the allegation of direct support from the United States for terrorists.

Monday night based on the speech, one can make some guesses about Putin’s short-term goals. Some of them are much more modest than defeating Ukraine as a whole.

At the end of his statement, Putin announced that he would present to the upper house of parliament the recognition of the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk and the conclusion of a “friendship and cooperation agreement” with both.

The name of the agreement thus lacked the “assistance” familiar from the YYA agreement between Finland and the Soviet Union. This did not matter, as the lower house of the Russian parliament approved military assistance to the “People’s Republics” as early as Tuesday. Thus, the units of the Russian armed forces flow into the separatist region of eastern Ukraine.

The places are already familiar to troop commanders, as the “People’s Republics” are Russian creations armed by Russia and whose defeat was prevented by Russian troops in the summer 2014 battles.

Speech in light, it would be quite a surprise if Russian armors stopped at the so-called Minsk contact line, which has been the real eastern border of Ukraine for seven years. What would be the most modest possible advance of Russian troops on the west side of the line?

The first target on the west side of the line could be the coastal city of Mariupol, which the separatists narrowly lost in 2014. At the port and the richest man in Ukraine Rinat Ahmetovin the huge steel mills it controlled could even have some sort of absolute value for Russia.

The conquest of Mariupol would also have a symbolic value. Most of the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions are still under Ukrainian control, and it has just transferred regional administrations to Mariupol.

Progress However, the city of Mariupol would mean a full-scale offensive war against Ukrainian forces. In other words, Russia would have on its neck all the disadvantages of an offensive war and be rewarded with a tiny port city.

It would be more likely to proceed immediately in the direction of Odessa, at least as far as the mouth of the Dnieper.

Putin specifically mentioned U.S. plots when presenting the Ochakivi Navy Headquarters on the west side of the Dnieper estuary. It is not a U.S. base but a command center built by the United States for Ukraine five years ago and used in Black Sea naval exercises.

However, advancing on the Black Sea coast across the Dnieper would be a fairly direct armed challenge to the United States that Putin can avoid for the time being. Advancing to Kherson, on the other hand, could work out, as it would open a continental connection to the Crimean peninsula.

From the north, important targets Putin mentioned in the latter part of his speech in Kharkov, from which, according to Putin, the flight of ballistic missiles to Moscow would be only 7-8 minutes. If anything can be deduced from this, the goal of Russian forces could be to advance on the Kharkiv-Kherson line.

In this plan, the millionth city of Dnipro would become a border city, which would not be quite a simple thing for Russia. The city has a wealth of experience from previous battles against Russia and the separatists it supports.

His speech at the end, Putin referred to his first period of attempts to build good Western relations. At the same time, he told the news of his discussions with the President of the United States Bill Clinton with Moscow in June 2000.

According to Putin, he asked Clinton directly at the time, “how would the United States respond to Russia’s request to join NATO.”

“Without opening all the details of the discussion, I can say that his reaction to my question was, let’s say, very prepared,” Putin said.

“And how the Americans actually perceived this possibility was practically seen in their transfers relative to our country.”