Why Russia's ‘complete focus’ in Ukraine war has now shifted to liberating Donbas region
India Today
After a month of war that Putin started in Ukraine, why is Russia making the liberation of the Donbas region its complete focus now?
After a month of intense fighting, Russia has said that the first phase of its “special military operation” in Ukraine is mostly complete and that it would now focus completely on "liberating" eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.
“Ukraine’s combat potential has been considerably reduced, which makes it possible to focus our core efforts on achieving the main goal, the liberation of Donbas,” Russia has said.
When Russia’s President Vladimir Putin started the war on February 24, he wanted Ukraine’s “de-Nazification, de-militarisation and its neutrality” with regard to his strategic tussle with the West.
He wanted to “stop genocides of Russian people” by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s regime, backed externally by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato). Of course, Putin also demanded Ukrainian recognition of two Russian-backed breakaway regions in Donbas as independent Republics.
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The West has accelerated military and humanitarian aid supplies for Zelenskyy to take on Putin’s clearly superior military and piled sanctions on Russia but so far avoided a direct conflict. The reason: Ukraine is not a Nato member. But it did want to be part of the US-dominated and Putin’s rival military alliance.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a strategic buffer between Russia and the West, was his pushback against Nato that has expanded in eastern Europe by making many erstwhile Soviet constituents its member.
