Russia and Ukraine: what does Putin want and Russia will end its war?
When Vladimir Putin destroyed the peace in Europe by starting a war against a democratic state of 44 million inhabitants, he justified this by the fact that modern Pro-Western Ukraine poses a permanent threat and that Russia cannot feel "safe, developed and existing".
But after weeks of bombing, thousands of deaths and the displacement of millions of refugees, the question remains: what is the purpose of his war and if there is a way out of this situation
What Putin wants?
It seems that the goals set by the Russian president at the beginning of the Russian invasion were reduced during a war that, according to him, would end in a quick victory. Putin could not even recognize that this was an invasion or a war, preferring the phrase "special military operation".
But what is clear is that he considers this a turning point in Russian history. "The future of Russia and its future place in the world is at stake," said Sergey Naryshkin, head of foreign intelligence.
The initial goal of the Russian leader was to invade Ukraine and resign from his government, thus ending his desire to join NATO in matters of Western defense.
Putin told the Russian people that his goal was to "disarm Ukraine and denazify it" in order to protect those who have suffered what he called 8 years of intimidation and genocide by the Ukrainian government. "The occupation of Ukrainian territory is not part of our plan, we do not intend to impose anything by force," he stressed.
But there were no Nazis or genocide, and Russia with brutal force established its control over dozens of settlements, uniting Ukrainians in resistance to its occupation.
The shelling continues, but the latest reports from the peace talks indicate that Russia is no longer seeking to overthrow the Ukrainian government, but rather seeks to make Ukraine neutral.
Why Putin wants a neutral Ukraine?
Since its independence in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has gradually turned to the West. It targets both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization "NATO".
The Russian leader seeks to reverse this trend by considering the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the collapse of historical Russia".
Putin said that Russians and Ukrainians - are one people. "Ukraine has never had the tradition of creating a real state," he stressed, denying Ukrainian history.
In 2013, Putin pressured the pro-Russian Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych not to sign an agreement with the European Union, which led to protests that eventually led to the impeachment of this Ukrainian president in February 2014.
Russia responded in 2014 by taking control of the southern Crimean region of Ukraine and stirring up a rebellion in the east and supported the separatists who fought Ukrainian troops in the 8-year war, which claimed the lives of 14,000 people.
There was a ceasefire and the Minsk Peace Agreement of 2015, which was never implemented. Shortly before his invasion of Ukraine, President Putin broke the peace agreement and recognized two small Russian-backed states as independent of Ukraine.
And when he sent his troops to Ukraine, Putin accused NATO of threatening "our historical future as a nation," baselessly claiming that NATO countries wanted to transfer the war to Crimea.
Can we get out of this war?
The adviser to the Ukrainian president, Mikhail Podolyak, believes that the ceasefire could begin in the coming days, as Russian troops are stuck in their current positions.
Both sides welcomed the progress of the negotiations and Podoljak said the Russian president had relaxed his demands.
At the beginning of the war, the Russian leader wanted Ukraine to recognize Crimea as part of Russia and recognize the independence of the separatist-led east, while Ukraine amended its Constitution to ensure that it would not join NATO and the European Union.
The future situation with Crimea and the Russian-backed states Luhansk and Donetsk is still far from settled, but they may not spoil the agreement if the parties agree to consider the issue later.
It seems that Russia has accepted that it cannot overthrow the Ukrainian leadership and replace it with a puppet government, as is the case in Belarus. "The enemy assigned me the number one target and my family-the second," said President Vladimir Zelensky at the beginning of the war, who received a warning.
"It seems that Putin has to accept a very limited list," said Tatiana Stanovaya of the Foundation for Political Analysis R - and the Carnegie Center in Moscow.
Indeed, Russia plans to create a "neutral and demilitarized" Ukraine with its own army and navy, on the model of Austria or Sweden, which are members of the European Union.
Austria is neutral and Sweden is not, in fact, it is offline and nevertheless participates in NATO exercises.
Not everyone is convinced that Russia is negotiating in good faith. The French foreign minister said that Moscow should first declare a ceasefire because you are not negotiating "with a gun to the temple".
What are the requirements of Ukraine?
The presidential adviser said that Ukraine's demands are clear: a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops, as well as legally binding security guarantees that would give Ukraine protection against a group of allied countries that would prevent attacks and "play an active role on Ukraine's side in the conflict".
Mark Wheeler, professor of international law and former UN mediation expert, said that the guarantee of the withdrawal of Russian troops to pre-war positions would not only be a requirement of Ukraine, but also a red line for the West that would refuse to accept other "frozen Russian conflicts".
Ukraine also softened its position after the Russian invasion, when President Zelensky said that the Ukrainians now understood that NATO would not accept them as a member state: "this is a fact and it must be recognized".
"We are working on documents that the presidents will be able to discuss and sign more," Podolak told US radio station PBS. It is clear that this will happen soon because this is the only way to end this war," he said.
Will Putin reach an agreement with NATO?
The hostility of the Russian president towards the West and his defensive military alliance of 30 NATO member states has intensified. He may be thinking about a compromise with Ukraine, but for him, the West has one goal: to divide society in Russia and ultimately destroy it.
Before the war, NATO demanded to go back until 1997 and abandon its expansion to the east, withdraw its troops and military infrastructure from the member states that have joined the Alliance since 1997, and not deploy "offensive weapons near the borders of Russia", that is, from Central Europe,
In the eyes of President Putin, he promised the West in 1990 that NATO would not advance "an inch to the east", but he did it anyway.
This was before the collapse of the Soviet Union, so the promise made to the then Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev concerned only East Germany in the context of United Germany.
Later, Gorbachev said, "The subject of NATO expansion was never talked about at the time."
After witnessing Putin's desire to destroy European cities in order to achieve their goals, Western leaders are no longer under any illusions.
German Chancellor Olaf Schulz believes that the Russian president "wants to dominate Europe in accordance with his worldview," and President Joe Biden called him a war criminal. Schultz and French President Emmanuel Macron both spoke about the fact that the European continent is going through a turning point in its history.
Before the war, Russia demanded that all American nuclear weapons be banned for export from the United States. The United States has proposed to start negotiations on the limitation of short- and medium-range missiles, as well as a new treaty on intercontinental missiles, but there is little chance of this happening at the moment.
Tatiana Stanova is afraid of falling into the Whirlpool of the new Cold War: "I have a very strong feeling that we must prepare for a new ultimatum to the West, which will be more military and aggressive than we imagined," she said.
What will happen next with Russia?
President Putin was stunned by the scale of the West's reaction to his invasion. He knew that NATO members would never send soldiers to the territory of Ukraine, but he could not guess how much the sanctions were already having a significant impact on the Russian economy, and he was indignant.
The European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada are targeting the Russian economy in several ways:
The assets of the Russian Central bank have been frozen and the largest Russian banks have been disconnected from the international SWIFT payment transfer network.
