Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine remains in a violent stalemate. Russian forces are pausing their attempts to occupy Kyiv, having withdrawn some of their forces from around the capital, but a major retreat is highly unlikely given Russia is recruiting several thousand mercenaries from Syria.
The Kremlin’s strategy now is to concentrate on overrunning the southern Ukraine port city of Mariupol, before joining up Russian forces in Crimea with those in Donbas to take control of as much of the region as possible.
This does not mean Putin intends to annex Donbas even if he can occupy it, since the economic costs for a weakened Russia economy would be considerable. He would instead support Donbas’s ‘independence’ and treat it as a client state, with the region’s reported shale gas reserves, coupled with the offshore gas reserves of Crimea, being satisfactory gains. If successful, this plan could, in time, undermine the Kyiv government and perhaps even achieve Russia’s original aim of installing a client government in Ukraine.
