"Putin will not give up until he has control of Ukraine"

"Putin will not give up until he has control of Ukraine"

Of:

Joachim Kerpner

PUBLISHED: LESS THAN 2 HOURS AGO

UPDATED: LESS THAN 20 MIN THEN

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Vladimir Putin will continue until he has political control over Ukraine.

That is the opinion of Eastern European expert Hugo von Essen.

- Russia will not stop until that goal has been achieved, he says.

Day 100 of Russia's invasion fell on Friday. Still, we have only seen the beginning, according to Hugo von Essen, an analyst at the Center for Eastern European Studies.

- The goal of this whole war is political control over Ukraine. Russia will not stop until it has simply achieved that goal.

 

Vladimir Putin.Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP

Is the goal still to take over the whole of Ukraine?

- The political goal of control over Ukraine can be achieved in different ways. It is not really about the territory on the ground, but the most important thing is to control the entire political landscape in Ukraine, to control the state.

- But I still think the end goal of the war remains. That luck will turn for Russia, that it will be possible to make new offensives against, for example, Kyiv. I think Russia thinks they are playing the "long game". Ukraine is more important to Russia than it is to the West, I think the Russian side thinks that "the West will eventually get tired of all the blood, of sending so much of its own military weapon systems, of all economic consequences, high petrol prices".

- The Russians think that "in the end, the Western world will put pressure on Ukraine to agree to some kind of diplomatic solution where you give Russia what you want". This has happened before, with the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015.

"Can last a long time"

You mean that the West thinks that this will probably not last for more than a year, while Putin thinks that it can last for ten years or more?

- Yes, I think Putin thinks we can do this for several years, the West will get tired soon.

If the Russians do not gain territorial control, how will they be able to gain political control?

- Through some upgraded variant of the Minsk agreements, where Ukraine is forced to agree to things like never joining NATO, agreeing to limit its military forces, Ukraine recognizing the status of Donbass and Crimea as Russian.

- Another way is to create chaos inside Ukraine, for example as a result of such diplomatic solutions. We know that there are very many in Ukraine who do not want to compromise with Russia at all. If Zelensky were to be forced by the Western world to agree to a diplomatic solution, it would create a great deal of political instability inside Ukraine.

- One can also imagine that if Ukraine were to agree to a diplomatic solution where it limits its military forces, Russia will have the opportunity to rebuild its forces and then attack Ukraine again.

"Big risk"

US President Joe Biden says "we must ensure that Russia can never attack another neighboring country again". But do you see a longer perspective, that there will be a new situation if Trump comes back?

- Yes, for example. And this fall, we have elections to the US Congress, where probably domestic issues will be more important than the war in Ukraine. I can imagine many Americans thinking “why should I pay this much money for some small country in Europe, Ukraine, I've never heard of it before. Russia can get Ukraine, I just want to avoid paying way too much money for petrol when I go to work ". Unfortunately, I think there is a great risk that such tendencies will increase in the western world, says Hugo von Essen.

 

Hugo von Essen, analyst at the Center for Eastern European Studies.

Photo: Foreign Policy Institute