For more than two months of a full-scale war against Ukraine, Russia changed its plans almost weekly. At first, it planned to seize the entire territory of Ukraine with lightning speed. And now it is thinking about how to “legalize” the occupied territories.
Despite the fact that the Russian Federation is capable of bringing many more troubles to the Ukrainian land, it cannot demonstrate significant achievements. ICTV Facts has compiled scenarios of Russia in Ukraine reported before the start of a full-scale invasion and throughout the hot phase of the war.
“Victory” before the war
At the end of 2021, the accumulation of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine began. Shortly thereafter, the collective West began to talk about the preparing of Russia for a full-scale war.
At the same time, the first details of the plans of the aggressor state began to appear.
Few people thought that the grouping that Russia had assembled on the borders of Ukraine would be enough to capture the entire territory of our state, but no one doubted that it was capable of moving far and causing significant damage to Ukraine.
The German edition of Bild even featured the Kremlin’s maximum plan, which included the capture of two-thirds of Ukraine.
The only exception would be the western regions, and Kyiv had to fall in the first days.
– Ukrainians will fight, but they will not be able to withstand the big attack of the Russians, – the source of the publication said at the time.
According to the source, after the capture of part of Ukraine, the so-called “people’s council” should have been created instead of the Ukrainian parliament, which would become the puppet power of the Russian Federation in our state.
In March, one of the captured Russian soldiers said that the occupiers hoped to complete the tasks within three days after the start of a full-scale war.
– We were told that we would march along the route. They took water and food for three days. Three days later we were supposed to return to the camp, – the Russian prisoner said during interrogation by the SSU.
Indirectly, the self-proclaimed President of Belarus Oleksandr Lukashenko also recalled the “blitzkrieg”.
A few weeks before the invasion, he stated that the war between Ukraine and Belarus would have lasted only a few days. In fact, because the CSTO joined the war.
– Ukraine will never fight with us: this war will last a maximum of three or four days. There will be no one to fight against us, – Lukashenko said.
These plans were also confirmed by an article that accidentally appeared on RIA Novosti on February 26. It was quickly hidden, but since this article nevertheless got into the network, it was able to be restored.
One of its theses was that the Russian Federation “restores its historical completeness by bringing together the Great Russians, White Rusians and Little Russians”. It is likely that this was to become a prerequisite for the restoration of some semblance of the Soviet Union.
In fact, the aggressor state wanted to destroy Ukrainian statehood and the identity of Ukrainians. For this, special execution lists were even prepared, as Foreign Policy wrote in February.
We saw confirmation of this after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, when there were several attempts on the lives of members of the country’s top political military leadership and massacres of citizens.
And recently, these plans of the Russians were confirmed by the mayor of Bucha, Anatoliy Fedoruk. According to him, the invaders made lists of people who were going to be killed. In particular, he and several local deputies got into it.
– They were not written by themselves. One of the locals dictated. There may have been some collaborations. That is, they knew in advance who they were going to, at what address, and what kind of person they were looking for, – Fedoruk told the Canadian television channel CBC.
Russia was preparing the genocide of Ukrainians and continues to carry it out – we, unfortunately, see it very clearly.
Bad plans B
One cannot but inspire restrained optimism that Russia “corrected” its plans in the public space almost weekly.
The Russian blitzkrieg was quickly defeated, which changed the Russian rhetoric.
From the destruction of nationalists to the liberation of the world from the West – what Russian propaganda did not say to hide its failure.
In mid-March, most of the world’s publications began to write that Russia was moving to plan B, because it had not been able to achieve its initial goals.
How exactly it will be implemented is not yet clear. Only one thing is clearly visible – Putin needs to demonstrate at least some “success” in the Ukrainian campaign.
It is noteworthy that Russian troops are trying to occupy as much territory as possible in order to “sell” it under the pretext of fulfilling all their goals.
But there is one “but”. Even before the start of a full-scale invasion, Russia declared that it should help the “DPR” and “LPR”, and after their official recognition, it was forced to go to the borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Currently, most military experts state that despite heavy fighting in the eastern and southern directions, Russian troops are being depleted and will soon lose their offensive potential.
Intelligence has received information that Putin may go to the most rash step and announce a massive mobilization in Russia to try to achieve any goals in the war.
– Whether Russia will announce full mobilization, of course, will depend on the hostilities that are currently ongoing in the eastern operational zone.
That is, if the enemy fails to achieve its plans in the near future, such a scenario is quite possible, we do not exclude it, – the speaker of the Ministry of Defense Oleksandr Motuzyanyk explained.
However, the reality is that this is just an attempt to buy time and take the war into a protracted phase.
And in it, Ukraine will have a much better position, especially given the recent decisions on the transfer of heavy weapons by the allies.
– If this eventually escalates into a protracted war of attrition, Ukraine will be in a generally better position,- Michael Kofman, senior fellow at the Center for Naval Analysis, explained.
Attempts to show “success”
In general, Russia does not have many scenarios left to show success in Ukraine. One of them is the creation of new quasi-formations and their “attachment” to the aggressor state.
Rumors about the so-called referendum in the Kherson region have been circulating for a long time. And although the Russian Federation has not yet decided to take this step, this may be the only opportunity to demonstrate at least some kind of “success”.
A “Korean” scenario for Ukraine is not excluded as well – that is, attempts to divide Ukraine into two conditional parts.
– There are reasons to believe that he (Putin, – Ed.) is considering the “Korean” scenario for Ukraine. That is, he will try to impose a distribution line between the non-occupied and occupied regions of our country.
In fact, this is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine. After all, he is definitely not in a position to swallow the entire state, – Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said at the end of March.
Even despite a series of failures, Russia still does not abandon attempts to remove the legitimately elected authorities of Ukraine, as evidenced by US information.
The invaders are trying to come up with a new “constitution” for Ukraine, according to which they will only recognize the puppet leadership in the occupied territories.
– Plans for a new “government” and a new “constitution” are being developed by Russian officials and the so-called separatists.
This planning includes a moratorium that prevents legitimate Ukrainian leaders and those who support the legitimate government of Ukraine from holding any leadership positions, – US Ambassador to the OSCE Michael Carpenter said.
Russia can even try to return the fugitive president Viktor Yanukovych as a “legitimate” head of Ukraine.
In this case, the Russian leadership and troops will have to find out what opinion the Armed Forces of Ukraine have about their actions. And with the adoption of Lend-Lease, there is a suspicion that the arguments will be extremely convincing.