What does Putin really want? stern expert explains Russia-Ukraine conflict

I think an invasion of all of Ukraine, including Kiev or even western Ukraine, I feel is very unlikely. The aggression clearly comes from one side. Ukraine is now like a hostage with someone putting a gun to his head.
What exactly is the Ukraine-Russia conflict about?
In order to understand the basic problem, you would have to look at the map and you will see that the Ukraine lies between Russia on the one hand and Poland, an EU country, on the other hand, and they are a bit torn apart is. You don’t know exactly where to go. For many years Ukraine belonged to the Soviet Empire and was more or less subordinate to Moscow. So the central government was in Moscow. Now, after Ukraine’s independence, the Ukraine said, for so long we belonged to Moscow, we want to be independent now, we want something of our own and we orientate ourselves differently. We are orienting ourselves towards the EU because ultimately this model also seems more attractive to us. We look at our neighbors Poland and realize, oh, they had five to six percent economic growth in some years. Everything is going well, they are free to travel. That is something completely different than if we join Moscow, a model that is not particularly successful both economically and socially. We want to go to the EU. Then there was an association agreement in 2013 that the then president wanted to sign and then, under pressure from Moscow, rejected it and said I won’t sign it now. We have partners here, we are still too weak and we have partners in the east and we use them as a guide. And then the people in Ukraine took to the streets and, in a nutshell, started a revolution, chased the president out of office in 2014 and said, well, we want to join the EU now. And there was an interim government that said, okay, we’ll sign it with the EU now. And Russia then said, that’s how you imagine it. All right, we understood, and then the first thing we did was annex Crimea and, as a second step, instigated this conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Why is the conflict threatening to escalate again now?
Of course, only one side is really responsible for the escalation in this case. And that is Russia, because Russia is now massing 100,000 soldiers on the borders of Ukraine, creating a potential threat that they are denying at the same time. But that’s absurd, because if there’s so much military there, then of course that’s a potential threat per se. So the aggression clearly comes from one side. Russia is feeling very strong at the moment. From the Kremlin’s point of view, he had a very positive year last year. Everything is going the way he imagines it to be. From his point of view, the parliamentary elections went well. The entire opposition is suppressed, chased out of the country or silenced.
What exactly is Russia’s President Putin’s strategy?
Russia’s long-term goal is to return Ukraine to subordination, preferably under a pro-Russian government. Or as another step, people everywhere who at least prevent Ukraine from turning completely to the west. You just don’t know exactly whether he’s threatening now or whether he really wants to do it. One does not know. The grand strategy now seems to go beyond Ukraine. Ukraine is now like a hostage that someone is putting a gun to his temple and is about to be blackmailed. The West. Because Putin had come up with a lot more now. He would now like to make amends for the disgrace of the collapsed Soviet Union and the entire night of this upheaval and would now like to have NATO’s assurance that NATO will not expand much further to include more members and more countries, because it wants NATO to entire presence in the countries that are close to Russia, i.e. in Eastern Europe. So he wants to sort of reorganize Europe. And Ukraine in this case is the hostage.
How likely is it that Putin is planning an invasion of Ukraine?
I think an invasion of all of Ukraine, including Kiev or even western Ukraine, I think is very unlikely, I feel, because I’m just wondering, what’s in it for you? Mentally, Ukraine is already lost. He can’t get that with tanks anymore. What’s different is that he’s built up that pressure so much, getting out of there now without escalating anything is difficult too. So either he does something else, cyber attacks, or he lets it escalate again locally in eastern Ukraine. For example, there is still the variant that he could conquer a strip of land to occupied Crimea. If you look at the map, the two cities are mostly conquering.
To what extent should Ukraine give up its demands to join NATO?
That wouldn’t change anything, because NATO can’t take Ukraine in anyway at the moment. Russia made sure of that. They instigated this war in eastern Ukraine around Donetsk and Lugansk and have separatists there. So they arranged for these Separatists to cede territory. If a country has such an armed, unresolved territorial conflict, NATO cannot accept this country at all, so that Ukraine’s NATO membership is not at all an issue at the moment anyway. And of course Russia knows that too. It took care of that by creating this conflict.
What role do the US and Joe Biden play in the conflict?
Russia thinks the West is totally weak, divided, struggling with its own problems. Europe is preoccupied with the entire pandemic. The new government in Germany has not yet been properly established. He thinks it’s a moment of weakness right now on the entire western front, so to speak. And that’s also a reason why Putin thinks it’s now or never. And of course he wants Biden to be like it used to be in the Cold War. The great powers USA and Russia get together and divide the world between themselves, have these two poles, so to speak, both respect each other as those who determine the fate of the world.
is Is a peaceful solution to the conflict still possible?
Russia is the one that has escalated this conflict, which has now just dragged these masses of military to this border. And Russia has to withdraw them or must withdraw them and above all not invade the Ukraine with this, with this whole military. And that now depends on Russia, what in the what, what Putin has just planned, how he reacts if the West doesn’t respond to his demands now. We all don’t know that. The demands are such that Putin must have known the West could not accept them. Because, of course, NATO cannot say, okay, Russia is just dictating to us how we now conduct our enlargement policy or our membership policy. NATO cannot accept that. So now we have to wait and see what Putin does.