by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Strategic update:
— fnord akimbo (@Tibtinabulum) March 21, 2022
Latest intel suggests that the #Russians have given up on taking #Kyiv. They will continue shelling it, however their focus will be on occupying territory in the SE: #Donetsk, #Luhansk, #Mariupol, #Mykolaiv, #Kryvyi Rih, #Dnipro and #Odesa. Good luck with that. pic.twitter.com/MBObceyXfe
If the above tweet is accurate, then Putin has decided to go the Novorossiya route. He wants to carve out a puppet client state from Ukraine in the general area of has historically been called Novorossiya. Below is what the political boundaries of such a client state might look like.
Anyway, doing this would make a lot of sense from the Russian point of view. But it’s extremely doubtful the Russians could pull it off. What’s more likely to happen is either Putin redfines victory and leaves Ukraine, or he escalates and we have something akin to WW3.
Only time will tell.
