Russia hasn’t achieved its goals in Ukraine, Volker says

Russia has not achieved its geopolitical goals in Ukraine,
Kurt Volker, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, said in an interview with the
Deutsche Welle news agency published on Jan. 24. “Russia hoped to bring to
power a friendlier government in Kyiv to keep Ukraine in its sphere of
influence, but that had the opposite effect,” he said, referring to the
elections of 2014. “Everything ended in tragedy considering a lot of people
suffered as a result of this conflict.” More than 10,000 have died and more
than a million became refugees “yet Russia didn’t achieve its goals in
Ukraine,” he said.

Russia’s intention in Ukraine is to destabilize the
situation, influence the government and create a wedge between Ukraine and the
West, Volker said. Russia doesn’t intend to occupy the territory militarily, he
said. The conflict in Donbas is not a civil war, he said, but a small-scale
invasion of Ukraine by Russia as part of an overall hybrid war.
“Russian-speakers live in various regions of Ukraine and they don’t have
conflicts and there isn’t discrimination,” he said. The Minsk Accords are very
important because they’re an instrument by which Russia confirms its
willingness to restore Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Zenon Zawada: Russia has
certainly failed to keep Ukraine in its geopolitical sphere of influence with
its aggressive, violent actions. At the same time, this military aggression has
succeeded in destabilizing Ukraine economically, politically and socially. In
this sense, Russia is succeeding in undermining Ukraine’s Western integration,
as well as Ukraine’s image among Europeans, who are growing increasingly
impatient of the sanctions imposed against Russia. With corruption and
resistance to reforms continuing to flourish even amid Russian aggression, more
Westerners have grown more skeptical of Ukraine’s potential for EU membership.

While we agree that Russia doesn’t want to occupy
Ukraine, we are confident that it views keeping this territory under its sphere
of influence as its top geopolitical priority. Therefore, we are confident that
the Russian government will not cease its aggression against Ukraine until this
territory returns to its control. So we can’t exclude the possibility of
expanded military aggression, though we don’t view that as the most likely
unfolding of events. The two most likely outcomes are a frozen conflict in
Donbas, or Russia decides to fulfill the Minsk Accords.