Thread by @TheStudyofWar

The return of the Kremlin’s notion of a “partitioned Ukraine” is likely an organized effort to mislead the international community into rejecting key components of Ukraine’s sovereignty: its territorial integrity as defined in 1991 and its right to self-determination. 🧵(1/11)

https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1735131543171973470

2/ Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev misrepresented US Pres. Biden’s response to a media question about whether the US policy is to win the war or help Ukraine to defend itself during a joint press conference with UKR Pres. Zelensky on Dec. 12.

3/ Medvedev routinely and deliberately makes outlandish statements, but the timing of these statements and focus on the idea that Ukraine could exist only as a rump state within the territory of Lviv Oblast...

4/ ...is consistent with earlier indicators that the Kremlin is returning to its domestic framing that Russia is fighting the war to “liberate its historic lands.”

5/ Medvedev’s comments follow shortly after Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova’s December 9 interview with AFP, which had likely marked an official rhetorical shift in the Kremlin’s framing of the war.

6/ Zakharova reiterated the Kremlin’s maximalist demands for full Ukrainian political capitulation and Kyiv’s acceptance of Russia’s military terms and introduced a vague prerequisite that Ukraine must withdraw its troops from “Russian territory” to resolve the war.

7/ ISW assessed that the Kremlin used similar information operations in late 2021 and early 2022 to create conditions for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine while misleading the West into the search for a diplomatic de-escalation.

8/ Russia is still pursuing its maximalist objective of controlling all of Ukraine and is using these information operations to deter further military aid to Ukraine and to stall for time needed to rebuild its defense industrial complex (DIB) and reconstitute its military.

9/ Medvedev’s musings and Zakharova’s statement considered in the context of the information operations the Kremlin used before the full-scale invasion...

10/ ...cast serious doubt on the notion that Moscow would be satisfied even with all the territory of the four Ukrainian oblasts it has illegally annexed, let alone with where the front lines currently stand.

11/ It is also noteworthy that the Kremlin appears to be revising its explicit territorial aims upward as US support for Ukraine appears to waver and Western voices reportedly argue for pressing Ukraine to offer territorial concessions.

Full update: isw.pub/UkrWar121323