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Reaffirming his stance, Mr. Kara-Murza continued, “No, he has already lost, because let’s not forget his original aims in February 2022; he was taking Kyiv in five days, he was destroying Ukraine as a sovereign independent country that was able to make its own decisions in foreign and domestic policy, and on both of those counts very clearly, Vladimir Putin has utterly failed.”

I thought it was 3 days, and I never heard Putin say anything of the kind. He said that he wants to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Demilitarization is happening in the meat-grinder in the east and denazification is still on the table. Both items are on the table in ongoing peace talks. Besides the point, Ukraine has lost its best real estate. Before the war, Donbas was Ukraine’s most productive region, it brought in the majority of foreign currency flowing into the country.

When Mr. Sebastian pointed out that Russian forces currently control around 20% of Ukrainian territory, Mr. Kara-Murza retorted that the “goal was 100%”.

Even if Russia wanted to control 100% of Ukraine, I don’t see the Russians committing the necessary resources to achieve this goal. Putin understands that mobilization will rock the boat at home. So the Russian effort is such that they manage to engage the Ukrainians but don’t cause unrest at home. It is a very clever strategy but not enough to control 100%. The Russian hope is that they will force the Ukrainians to comply with cultural and political demands that will eventually bring Ukraine into Russian orbit.