Russian spokeswoman provides insight into Moscow’s goals in Ukraine: “Russia wants complete surrender of Ukraine and the West” | War Ukraine and Russia

According to Zacharova, there can only be a “comprehensive, lasting and fair solution in Ukraine” if the West stops supplying weapons to the Ukrainian army and if Ukrainian troops are withdrawn from “Russian territory”.

Since there are no troops on Russian soil, Zacharova probably also includes the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, which Russia annexed in September last year, as Russian territory. They are still partly owned by Kiev. In other words, Russia wants more than what it had before the invasion and what it currently occupies in Ukraine.

In that respect, it is also worrying that Russian troops are engaged in an offensive in the east of Kharkiv, a region that Moscow has not yet formally annexed. It may well be that Putin’s territorial claim extends even further than what Zacharova is saying now.

As mentioned earlier, the Kremlin also wants the current pro-Western government in Kiev to disappear and a new pro-Russian regime to be installed. Zakharova reiterated that Russia was “completely justified” in invading Ukraine to “demilitarize and denazify” the country and “safeguard the rights of its Russian-speaking residents.” “Ukraine’s main goal is to kill as many Russians as possible,” she says plainly. “But we will not allow the existence of an aggressive Nazi state on our borders, a place from which danger threatens Russia and its neighbors.”

According to the American think tank ‘Institute for the Study of War’, we should have no illusions and Putin will only end the war when he has achieved all his objectives. “Russia has no intention of entering into serious negotiations in good faith,” is the analysis. “And negotiating on Russian terms amounts to a complete surrender of Ukraine and the West.”