But goals not yet achieved
Kremlin: Operation is “strictly according to plan”
03/23/2022 02:03 am
The attack on Ukraine is likely to result in more losses for Russia than expected, and there can be no question of a quick march through. International observers assume that the Kremlin misjudged the situation. Meanwhile, the Russian government is trying to sell the operation as a success.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, the Russian military operation in Ukraine is proceeding “strictly according to plan”. The course of the mission corresponds to the goals set in advance, said Peskow in English in an interview with the TV channel CNN on Tuesday. “It’s a significant mission with significant objectives,” he said. The government in Moscow describes the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, which has been going on for almost a month, as a “special military operation”. Talking about “war” is a punishable offense in Russia.
When asked what President Vladimir Putin had achieved in Ukraine so far, Peskov said that the goals had “not yet” been achieved. Among the goals he named were the decimation of the Ukrainian military and Kiev’s understanding that the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, is now an “unmovable part of Russia.” In addition, Ukraine must recognize that the separatist regions in the east are now “independent states”. At the beginning of the war, Putin declared the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine to be the goals of the “operation”. According to many observers, the original plan was to set up a puppet government loyal to Moscow after Ukraine capitulated.
Observers see supply problems
The US government and Ukraine have been reporting for days that the Russian armed forces are having logistical problems and are making little progress, especially in the north and east of the country. “We continue to see evidence that the Russians did not plan logistics and supplies properly,” US Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday. “We know that, to the best of their ability, they continue to have problems with fuel and that they still have difficulties with food,” he said. The Russians are “increasingly frustrated by the lack of progress”.
Earlier, US President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, said that Putin had not been able to achieve any of his fundamental goals with the war against Ukraine. “First, Ukraine should be subdued, second, Russian power and prestige should be strengthened, and third, the West should be divided and weakened,” Sullivan said. Russia has “so far achieved the opposite”.
In the CNN interview, Peskov was also asked whether Putin could rule out the use of atomic bombs. He then said that, according to well-known Russian security doctrine, nuclear bombs would only be used if there was an “existential threat” to the country. The Pentagon said that despite “dangerous” rhetoric from Moscow, the US armed forces had so far not observed anything that would necessitate a heightened state of alert for nuclear weapons.