Vladimir Putin’s marathon press conference on 19 December, an annual year-end event, offered no evidence that Russia may abandon the goals the president set for his “special military operation” against Ukraine in February 2022: conquering Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. True to form, Putin seemed unperturbed that nearly four years into the war his army had managed to fully occupy only Luhansk, despite having already taken control of more than a third of that region, as well as Donetsk, by 2015.
Putin’s unyielding stance shouldn’t be a surprise. Soon after the invasion, Russia’s State Duma adopted legislation incorporating these four Ukrainian regions into Russia – and this month the foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, reiterated Putin’s territorial claims.
