This was – in addition to the establishment of a land corridor to Crimea – the ‘liberation of Donbas’, which was to be understood as the occupation of Ukrainian territory within the administrative bor- ders of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts (Moscow recognised the ‘independence’ of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics within those borders). [...] The Kremlin is hoping that the combined effect of the growing material and human losses in Ukraine, the energy, economic, food and migration crises in Europe, the US and other regions of the world, will gradually cause a change in the attitude of key Western countries towards the conflict: as a re- sult, they will come to exert increasing political pressure on Kyiv to bring it to an end as soon as. [...] As it seems, in an optimistic variant for the Kremlin, this could happen as early as the summer of 2022 (before the effects of the crisis become fully apparent), in the winter of this year (under the influence of local hunger in the poorest countries and energy supply problems in Europe during the winter heating season) or, as a last resort, in subsequent seasons (e.g. [...] OSW Commentary NUMBER 452 4 As has been the case so far, the realisation of the above scenarios depends on many factors, among which the most important seem to be: the ability and determination of the Ukrainian people to resist Russia, the scale and regularity of Western support (not only military, but also economic and infrastructural) for Ukraine, and the extent of resilience and the level of po. [...] Massive state propaganda, the destruction of the independent media, the suppression of opposition activity and the intimidation of the political elite in the absence of any visible divisions that could threaten the Kremlin, as well as the gradual transition of the economy to a war-mobilisation model, have all increased the Russian government’s room for manoeuvre in its aggressive external policy.
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