![]() In Monday’s address, Putin focused on the continuing offensive in the eastern Donbas region, mentioning it five times in his speech. Russia has since said it would refocus its military efforts on eastern Ukraine, but its progress has remained unsteady amid fierce Ukrainian resistance. Many analysts believe Russia’s initial goal was to achieve a quick victory after the initial invasion, but that this strategy failed for a number of reasons, including poor supplies of food, fuel and ammunition for servicemen and inaccurate expectations that Ukrainians would welcome Russian invaders as “liberators”, among others. “They didn’t achieve their goals, but don’t know what to do instead,” he said. “Judging by how Putin placed his assessments, Russia so far has no decision about how to exit the war,” Igar Tyshkevich, a Belarusian analyst based in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera. One analyst noted that Putin’s speech appeared to show that Moscow has not decided on a plan on how to end the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, rounds of punitive sanctions targeting Russian officials and sectors of the Russian economy have left Putin increasingly isolated on the world stage and hurt the Russian economy. Russia’s most recent estimate in late March was more than 1,300 Russian forces had been killed. The Ukrainian defence ministry has estimated that some 25,000 Russian servicemen have been killed. When Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Kremlin said the goal of the “special military operation” was to “denazify” and “demilitarise” its neighbour.īut in the weeks since then, Russian forces have suffered a series of setbacks on the battlefield and been forced to withdraw forces from several fronts. “He avoids the word because it is associated with trouble, defeat, thwarted hopes and expectations,” Volodymyr Fesenko, of the Kyiv-based Penta think-tank, told Al Jazeera. There were also warnings that Putin could announce a national mobilisation effort to boost the ranks of the Russian military.īut the president’s address to 11,000 servicemen in Red Square on Monday did not mention the word “Ukraine” once. ![]() Others suggested the Russian president could use his speech to declare the annexation of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists declared breakaway republics in 2014. Some experts predicted Putin would express triumph regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the lead-up to Russia’s Victory Day this year, observers speculated about the potential contents of Putin’s address. Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously used the anniversary to project Moscow’s moral superiority over Nazism – and anyone he opts to label a “Nazi”. Kyiv, Ukraine – Every year, on May 9 Russia celebrates “Victory Day”, a commemoration of the USSR’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
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