Since February 24, 2022, Meduza has been broadcasting live about the Russian-Ukrainian war. We publish your messages every day because we are certain that we need to keep talking about war. Share with us your thoughts about war. What emotions are you feeling? How does war affect your life and your attitude to the world? If you have a war story, tell it. The feedback form is at the end of this article. You can read the previous day’s review here.
Russia
The military convinced Vladimir Putin that in the fall of 2026 they would be able to establish control over the entire territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. About this He writes The Financial Times cited several sources, including those close to the Kremlin, as well as Ukrainian intelligence assessments.
Two sources who spoke with the Russian president said Putin’s desire to seize the entire Donbass region was now growing — although in the early stages of the big war with Ukraine, they said, he privately expressed a willingness to freeze fighting along the current frontline.
One of the newspaper’s interviewers said: “I pushed him to stop at the current front line. But he continues to say: ‘No, I cannot give up on this matter.'”
The newspaper’s sources indicated that Putin’s confidence that the Ukrainian defense would soon collapse could not be shaken by Russia’s increasing weakness (due to Ukrainian drone strikes, an abbreviated version of the military parade in Red Square had to be held on May 9), nor by the slow pace of advance of Russian forces on the front.
The Financial Times writes that the Russian president expects that seizing the entire Donbass would allow him to “raise the price for any ceasefire,” as well as put forward more territorial claims.
Deputy Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Vadim Skibitsky believes that success in Donbass will allow Russia to claim the entire territory of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. Currently, Russian forces control only part of these Ukrainian regions.
It will be more difficult for Russia to capture the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, the Financial Times wrote, than Donbas – although a battlefield breakthrough does not look like a matter of the near future.
Meanwhile, the newspaper’s sources who were involved in informal negotiations to end the war believe that Putin’s “real ambitions” may still lie in imposing control over most of Ukraine, including Kiev and Odessa.
“He won’t take Zaporozhye, he won’t take Donbass, he won’t take Kherson,” one Financial Times interviewer said. “But remember, the plan was always to take Kiev. The mission has been set and must be completed.”
War in pictures. Interceptor drones in the Donetsk region
War through the eyes of Medusa readers
Medusa’s readers live in different countries and have different attitudes toward war. We publish your messages to see this event through your eyes. Our editors try to represent all viewpoints, even if they do not match the editorial position. However, in accordance with the Medusa Law, we do not publish messages that contain “hate speech,” justify the killing of civilians, or express direct support for an aggressive war.
Leonid (Izhevsk). Over the course of these four additional years, the state of mind changes from despair to complete apathy and back. What is certainly there is no longer hope. Somehow, you can live and sometimes even realize old dreams, but after some individual bright personal moments, you again return to this hopeless reality. Two or three good weeks a year – that’s it.
Now I feel like I’m in February and March 2022 again. I feel almost completely isolated: all my friends and acquaintances, with one exception, have flown to the camp, plus or minus, loyal to the authorities; There is nothing to say about my parents and relatives – they never left her, of course. There are of course some pleasant surprises, but they do not change the overall picture. If it weren’t for his wife and cat, he would have gone crazy long ago. The wife no longer wants to discuss political topics, but it only drives her best friend to despair, and he is already having a hard time.
All that’s left is to grit your teeth and get on with your life. I suppose this is true for many people. If I could leave somewhere, I would leave. Russia sometimes feels like a kind of prison, a pot in which we are all slowly boiled, like those same frogs.