One expert explains that the Russian president's plans stretch far beyond Ukraine.
| By Tim Schneider Staff Editor, Opinion |
That's the number of days that have passed since Russia invaded Ukraine. Over the past five months, the world has witnessed a war of terrible brutality: Civilians have been attacked, hospitals bombed, lives extinguished. The cost — civilian and military — is incalculable. |
In the face of such horror, it's sometimes hard to get a grasp on what's happening day to day. The sheer duration of the war and its attritional nature — an advance here, a reversal there — can make it difficult to follow. But the outline is clear enough. In Ukraine's east, Russian forces, in effective control of Luhansk, have turned their attention to the neighboring Donetsk. In the south, where Russia made early inroads, the Ukrainians have mounted some successful counterattacks. The two sides now seem to be locked in a deadly stalemate. |
To Vladimir Putin, this is exactly as it should be. According to Tatiana Stanovaya, an expert on Russian politics who wrote a guest essay for Times Opinion this week, the Kremlin appears to believe that everything is going according to plan. The goal is to secure control over Ukraine's east and the land corridor to Crimea, something that Russian advances suggest could be well within reach. |
But Putin's aims go far beyond that. In Stanovaya's telling, informed by two decades spent closely observing the president, they extend to the future of the Ukrainian state and Russia's relations with the West. The plan, as Stanovaya puts it, is a "strategic Russian doll" whose ultimate purpose is to bring about "a new world order." |
Such grand imaginings, however fanciful, feel very far away from the front lines. But in connecting the two, Stanovaya shows how the battles being waged in the towns and villages of Ukraine could hold the key to a radically different world. |
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