Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion to destroy NATO and seize control of all of Ukraine, and his "initial war demands" include not only demands on Ukraine but also on NATO and the West. This is stated in a material by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), reported by UNN.
Details
Analysts refer to Putin's interview with the English-language publication India Today, in which he "tried to misrepresent his war goals as geographically limited exclusively to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Putin's focus... on the Donetsk and Luhansk regions contradicts the fact that his full-scale invasion initially aimed to seize much more territory than just these two regions, including Kyiv, and to fully control Ukraine through a Kremlin-installed government. Russia had to revise its strategy after failing to capture Kyiv to focus on more limited operations in eastern Ukraine.
They indicate that Putin tried to conceal his rejection of the latest US peace proposal, stating that there are points in the US proposal that Russia cannot agree to, but that he would not provide more details to "not disrupt" Trump's peace process.
"The Kremlin deliberately refrains from publicly discussing the December 2 meeting to conceal Russia's rejection of the US and Ukrainian peace proposal, which did not take into account all of Russia's absolutist war demands," ISW summarizes.
Recall
Kremlin head Vladimir Putin called the almost 5-hour meeting with American negotiators in Moscow "necessary" and "very useful," stating that "Russia will liberate Donbas and "Novorossiya" in any case - by military or other means."