Vladimir Putin’s exit strategy for the Ukraine War gained more defined contours this Wednesday (28), when the Kremlin said that the conflict will last “at least until the liberation of the People’s Republic of Donetsk”.
The statement was made by spokesman Dmitri Peskov, in his usual conference call with reporters covering the day to day of the Russian government. It is the first time that a goal of the war that began on February 24 has been put so objectively.
The self-proclaimed republic is one of two Ukrainian provinces that make up the Donbass, the Don River basin, a mostly Russian-speaking region that has been partially under the control of pro-Kremlin separatists since the civil war that followed Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. .
His recognition and that of his sister, Lugansk, was one of the pretexts for the invasion — they asked Moscow for help against Kiev, just as their two leaders are now in Moscow to finalize the formal annexation of the areas to Russia, in a kind of closing cycle.
Denis Puchilin, from Donetsk, and Leonid Psetchnik, from Lugansk, flew to the Russian capital after the referendums in the two regions ended on Tuesday (27). As in the southern areas of Kherson and Zaporijia, all the more suspiciously because they are newly occupied regions, a near-unanimous majority voted in favor of joining Russia in what was described as a farce in Kiev and the West.
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