It took a few hours on Thursday for Russian President Vladimir Putin to disrupt Europe’s peace and security in his bid to strip Ukrainians of their right to self-determination.
With air, sea and land attacks, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine continued on Friday, with US sources familiar with intelligence warning that the capital Kiev could fall in a few days.
Putin has been very clear about his basic goals in the invasion: he wants to disarm the country, sever its ties to the NATO military alliance and end the Ukrainian people’s aspirations to join the West.
“We are going to try to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine,” Putin said of the country – which is led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky – in a speech broadcast minutes before the attacks began on Thursday.
“As well as prosecuting those who committed various bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation,” he added, repeating an unfounded allegation of genocide in areas of Ukraine’s Donbass region controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
These, in short, are Putin’s goals. But guessing exactly how he plans to execute that plan is a different matter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined on Friday to answer questions about the goals of the invasion and when hostilities might end. But history can serve as a guide to understanding Putin’s possible endings.
Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, several possible scenarios have become apparent:
Annexation of Crimea 2.0
The Russian government has already recognized the breakaway states of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. This week, the Russian military conquered much larger territory, pressing an offensive around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s largest city in the east, and, in the south, around the city of Kherson.
If Russian forces are able to capture the port city of Odessa, it is possible to imagine a land bridge stretching across southern Ukraine, potentially linking the municipality to Transnistria – a breakaway enclave in Moldova where Russian troops are stationed – , Crimea and other Ukrainian regions.
divided ukraine
Putin, in his biased history of Ukrainians and Russians as “one people,” noted that the western edge of modern Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union by the late dictator Joseph Stalin.
Parts of this region formerly belonged to Poland, Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic) and Romania during wars and, before that, to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. If Putin has in mind the division of Ukraine, Galicia and the city of Lviv – close to the Polish border – could be part of a kind of remnant Ukrainian state, while Russia focuses its attention on the east of the country.
Such a split could make Ukraine “look like Germany in the Cold War era, with the western part more dependent on Europe and the eastern part sucked into Russian spheres of influence, which include Belarus,” he told Reuters. CNN Russian historian and author Alexander Etkind.
This sort of border redraw may be an expansionist fantasy, but it can set apart what Moscow – justifiably or not – perceives as a more nationalist part of Ukraine.
“Putin would love for all politically active and independent (Ukrainians) to leave their part of Ukraine,” added Etkind.
Dividing the country was suggested by Putin during a broadcast on Wednesday morning. “Let me remind you that people living in territories that are part of present-day Ukraine were not asked how they wanted to build their lives when the USSR was created or after World War II,” he said, indicating a referendum in the style of from Crimea.
“Freedom guides our policy, the freedom to independently choose our future and the future of our children. We believe that all people living in Ukraine today, whoever wants to do this, should be able to enjoy this right to make a free choice,” Putin said.
pro-Russian state
Western intelligence officials warn that Russia is planning to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected government, replacing it with a puppet regime.
Putin has suggested he views the current government as illegitimate and lamented the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Ukraine has other politicians who may be eager to fill the vacancies of the pro-Russian government, possibly forcibly installed.
One of Putin’s main allies in Ukraine is Viktor Medvedchuk, a prominent politician and oligarch. He faces treason charges and is under house arrest.
A somber president Zelensky vowed to remain in Kiev on Thursday, saying Russian sabotage groups had already entered the capital and marked him “as number one target, and my family as number two target”. “They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.”
restless occupation
Russia says it doesn’t want an occupation, but it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which it tries to impose its form of heavy-handed rule on Ukraine.
That would be very difficult for Ukrainians to accept: they live in a country with a free press, free local politics and a tradition of street protests. Many Ukrainians view the Russian political system – in which genuine opposition protests are largely banned, or very difficult to organize – with great trepidation.
violent occupation
Putin had no problem supporting strong, violent local men with little regard for human rights.
Russia’s air force supported President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, providing firepower to crush the country’s armed opposition groups and razing entire neighborhoods to the ground in the process.
Putin’s own political rise began with the pacification of Chechnya, a breakaway republic in Russia’s North Caucasus.
The Russian campaign culminated in the inauguration of Ramzan Kadyrov, a local warlord and former rebel accused of ruling the Caucasus Republic as his personal fief. Activists say LGBTQIA+ people and political opponents are persecuted – with some allegations of kidnappings, torture or disappearances.
republic of fear
Russia has a fearsome internal security apparatus that arrests and harasses dissidents and keeps potentially troublesome opponents out of politics.
Ukrainians living in Crimea – which was occupied by Russia in 2014 and annexed after a referendum widely seen as a sham – have experienced first-hand what it’s like to live in a state where Russia’s state security service is all-powerful.
Filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, one of Ukraine’s most prominent former prisoners of conscience, has been charged with what human rights groups describe as preposterous charges, including terrorism, arms trafficking and organizing a terrorist group.
He was arrested in Crimea in 2014 after peacefully opposing the Russian occupation. He received a Russian prison sentence of 20 years in 2015 but was released in a prisoner exchange with Ukraine in 2019 and has since spoken extensively about the torture he has endured in the custody of Russian authorities.
Like Senstov, Ukraine now faces Russia’s strong arm for daring to oppose Putin’s revanchist vision. The country’s ability to choose its own future now depends on its fighters, who fight Russian forces alone.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
