Vladimir Putin is now after the whole of Ukraine, not just control over the two breakaway republics in the east, NUPI researcher Julie Wilhelmsen believes.
She pointed out that the backdrop for the conflict has been Russia’s desire for control of the two breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine and a buffer zone against NATO.
“But what we face now – and which Putin clearly signaled in his speech last night – is something even more comprehensive,” Wilhelmsen told NTB.
She pointed out that Putin used the word “junta” in his description of the Ukrainian leadership. He said that there must be a demilitarization of Ukraine and that the country must be “de-Nazified.”
Regime change
“It is a type of rhetoric that signals that the Kremlin is now willing to use military force to carry out a regime change in Ukraine and establish a government that is pro-Russian,” Wilhelmsen said.
“For me, as an analyst of Putin’s wars since the war in Chechnya in 1999, we are now in a phase where the Kremlin has decided and is willing to use all means to achieve what they want,” she said.
This means that Russia is likely to be willing to use military force to gain control of the whole of Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv.
Wilhelmsen says it is still unclear whether Russia is willing to go in with ground forces in a full occupation.
Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews
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I agree with Julie. The Kremlin – it’s not just Putin – wants to END the war and knows that requires taking ALL Ukraine. Whether the Russians stop short of Lviv in the far west remains to be seen, but the West should avoid issuing ultimatums.
It *had* looked like it might be just Gradual Escalation, which would mean only more, gradually escalated war, as we found out in Vietnam.
Again, WE the West are responsible for this with our stubbornly stupid refusal to give the Russians their own Monroe Doctrine for their own border neighbors. We broke our security promises to them after the fall of the Soviet regime by pushing NATO east at them.
And then we broke our Budapest peace agreement with them with our 2014 Kiev coup – no mere “revolution” for the 4 obvious reasons I have already listed here on Norway Today – threatening them with an “interventionist”/aggressive NATO all the way up to Kharkov at their throats.
Meanwhile, Earth continues to start to boil, instead of the superpowers getting together to tackle the environmental holocaust staring at us!
Lemming Fever!
Senator Rand Paul – I share my analyses and assessments with his key staffer – basically gelded the Senate’s Ukraine war resolution and has so far prevented Joe Biden from getting us into the war he wants. And again, I believe Joe is trying to get a Democrat dictatorship like he and John McCain tried to get in 1999, just using our wrongful (Rambouillet App. B) Kosovo bombing war as the pretext then.
If Joe *is* able to get the major Ukraine war he wants going and continuing, he will *not* be able to control/prevent it from escalating into a very nuclear World War 3. And if he does achieve the deaths of 10s of millions of American men, women, and children in such a wrongful, unjustified war we (like Norwegians) are so unprepared for, he’ll be hanged for High Treason, after it is over … if he is still alive.
Many if not most of our families/loved ones won’t be.