"The war will continue": Portnikov names Putin's true goal in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin cannot make a final decision on the fate of Ukrainian lands because he does not know which part of Ukraine's territory the Russian army will be able to occupy in the future.

This opinion was expressed by Ukrainian journalist Vitaliy Portnikov on his YouTube channel.

Vitaliy Portnikov claims that the occupation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions is only an intermediate stage. Putin's ultimate goal is to seize the entire East and South of Ukraine and then either turn the rest of the country into a puppet state or completely annex its entire territory.

"The answer is absolutely clear: Putin will continue the war with Ukraine under any circumstances. If he establishes control over the territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, the war will continue. If he does not establish control over these territories, the war will continue," the journalist notes.

In his view, there is no other possible scenario. Since February 2022, the Russian president has definitively "decided that not the Ukrainian people, but he himself should decide who will govern Ukraine."

"From this perspective, the fact that the Russian army has not yet established control over the territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions is not a reason for Putin to stop the fighting on the Russian-Ukrainian front. On the contrary, it is a pretext for continuing a multi-year war of attrition against Ukraine, a decision Putin made a few months after realizing that his blitzkrieg had failed," the journalist states.

Portnikov believes that even if the four regions are occupied, any peace negotiations will be a trap. Putin is likely to put forward deliberately unacceptable conditions for Kyiv and the West to gain a legitimate pretext for continuing the war.

"After holding fake referendums, the decision will be made to annex these Ukrainian regions to the Russian Federation and demand that the Ukrainian army withdraw from the administrative borders of these regions. This is a typical salami-slicing tactic that Putin intends to follow during the next phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war," Portnikov notes.

Thus, the final decision on the fate of Ukrainian lands entirely depends on how far the Russian army can advance.