ANALYSIS | Annexations, a remnant state or puppet rulers. This is what Putin may be planning for Ukraine

(CNN) — It took Russian President Vladimir Putin a few hours on Thursday to break Europe’s peace and security in his attempt to strip Ukrainians of their right to self-determination.

With air, sea and ground attacks, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine continued into Friday, with US sources familiar with intelligence warning that the capital, Kyiv, could fall within days.

Putin has been very clear about his basic goals in invading: he wants to disarm Ukraine, sever its ties with the NATO military alliance, and kill the Ukrainian people’s aspirations to join the West.

“We will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine,” Putin said of the country, led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a speech broadcast minutes before the attacks began on Thursday.

“In addition to bringing to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation,” Putin said, repeating an unfounded accusation of genocide in areas of Ukraine’s Donbas region controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

Those, in short, are Putin’s goals. But guessing exactly how he plans to execute that plan is a different matter.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday refused to answer repeated questions about the goals of his invasion of Ukraine and when hostilities might end. But history can serve as a guide to understanding Putin’s possible ultimate goals.

Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, several possible scenarios have become apparent:

Annexation of Crimea 2.0

The Russian government has already recognized the small breakaway states of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine.

This week, the Russian army seized much larger territories, pressing an offensive around Kharkiv, the largest city in eastern Ukraine, and in the south, around the city of Kherson.

If Russian forces are able to capture the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, it is possible to envision a land bridge stretching across southern Ukraine, potentially even linking Transnistria, a separatist enclave in Moldova, where Russian troops are stationed. , with Odessa, Crimea, and southern and eastern Ukraine.

A divided Ukraine

Putin, in his biased story of Ukrainians and Russians as “one people”, has pointed out that the western edge of present-day Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union by the late dictator Joseph Stalin.

Parts of this region previously belonged to interwar Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, and before that to the Austro-Hungarian empire. If Putin has partition in mind, Galician Ukraine and the city of Lviv, near the Polish border, could be part of a kind of Ukrainian state, while Russia focuses its attention on the east of the country.

Such a split could make Ukraine “look like Cold War-era Germany, with western Ukraine more dependent on Europe and the eastern part” absorbed into Russian spheres of influence, which include Belarus, he told CNN. Russian historian and author Alexander Etkind.

That kind of redrawing of borders may be an expansionist fantasy, but it could separate what Moscow, rightly or wrongly, perceives as a more nationalistic part of Ukraine.

“Putin would love to see all politically active and independent (Ukrainians) leave their part of Ukraine,” Etkind added.

Putin hinted at dividing the country in his Wednesday morning broadcast. “Let me remind you that people living in territories that are part of today’s Ukraine were not asked how they wanted to build their lives when the USSR was created or after World War II,” he said, indicating a referendum-style Crimea.

“Freedom guides our policy, the freedom to independently choose our future and the future of our children. We believe that all peoples living in Ukraine today, anyone who wants to do this, should be able to enjoy this right to freely choose” Putin said.

A pro-Russian state

Western intelligence officials warn that Russia plans to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected government, replacing it with a puppet regime.

Putin has suggested that he regards Ukraine’s current democratically elected government as illegitimate and has deplored the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Ukraine has other politicians who may be eager to fill the ranks of a pro-Russian government, possibly installed by force.

One of Putin’s main allies in Ukraine is Viktor Medvedchuk, a prominent politician and oligarch. He faces charges of treason in the Ukraine and has been under house arrest.

A somber Zelensky vowed to stay in Kyiv on Thursday, saying Russian sabotage groups had already entered the capital and marked him “as target number one, my family – as target number two,” he said in a video statement. . “They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.”

an uncomfortable occupation

Russia says it does not want to be an occupier, but it is easy to imagine a scenario in which Russia tries to impose its heavy-handed form of government on Ukraine.

That would be a hard pill for Ukrainians to swallow: they live in a country with a free press, freewheeling local politics and a tradition of street protest. Many Ukrainians view the Russian political system, where genuine opposition protests are largely prohibited or very difficult to organize, with great apprehension.

a violent occupation

Putin has had no problem backing violent men with scant regard for human rights.

Russia’s air force backed President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war, providing overwhelming firepower to crush the country’s armed opposition groups and leveling entire neighborhoods in the process.

Putin’s own political rise began with the pacification of Chechnya, a breakaway republic in Russia’s North Caucasus.

Russia’s campaign there culminated in the installation of Ramzan Kadyrov, a local warlord and former rebel accused of running the Caucasus republic as his personal fiefdom. activists say that LGBTQ people and political opponents are harassed and persecuted, and some have allegedly been kidnapped, tortured or disappeared.

a republic of fear

Russia has a fearsome national security apparatus that jails and persecutes dissidents and keeps potentially troublesome opponents out of politics.

Ukrainians living in Crimea, which was occupied by Russia in 2014 and annexed after a referendum widely viewed as a sham, have experienced firsthand what it is like to live in a state where the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) , for its acronym in English), is almighty.

Filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, one of Ukraine’s most prominent expresses of conscience, has been indicted on what human rights groups have described as ludicrous charges, including terrorism, arms trafficking and organizing a terrorist group.

He was arrested in Crimea in 2014 after peacefully opposing the Russian occupation. He received a Russian prison sentence of 20 years in 2015, but was released in a prisoner exchange with Ukraine in 2019 and has since spoken extensively about his torture in the custody of Russian authorities.

Like Senstov, Ukraine now faces the strong arm of Russia for daring to oppose Putin’s vindictive vision. The country’s ability to choose its own future now depends on its fighters, who are fighting alone against Russian forces.