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Map of the Russia-Ukraine war for 2022.05.08 by BBC ^[1]

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56720589

Why has Russia invaded Ukraine and what does Putin want?

By Paul Kirby, BBC News. 2022.05.09.

Vladimir Putin unleashed the biggest war in Europe since World War Two with the justification that modern, Western-leaning Ukraine was a constant threat and Russia could not feel "safe, develop and exist".

Thousands of people have since died, towns and cities such as Mariupol lie in ruins and 13 million people have been displaced. But the questions remain: what was it all for and how will it end? What was Putin's original goal?

The Russian leader's initial aim was to overrun Ukraine and depose its government, ending for good its desire to join the Western defensive alliance Nato. After a month of failures, he abandoned his bid to capture the capital Kyiv and turned his ambitions to Ukraine's east and south.

Launching the invasion on 24 February he told the Russian people his goal was to "demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine". His declared aim was to protect people subjected to what he called eight years of bullying and genocide by Ukraine's government. Another objective was soon added: ensuring Ukraine's neutral status .

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of freeing Ukraine from oppression while foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin argued "Russia's future and its future place in the world are at stake".

Ukraine's democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said "the enemy has designated me as target number one; my family is target number two". His adviser said Russian troops made two attempts to storm the presidential compound. Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech, as he visits the Vostochny cosmodrome outside the city of Tsiolkovsky, some 180 km north of Blagoveschensk, in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, 12 April 2022

President Putin has spoken of Russia's invasion as a "noble" cause

Russia's leader refused to call it an invasion or a war. Moscow continues to coin Europe's biggest war since 1945 a "special military operation".

The claims of Nazis and genocide in Ukraine are completely unfounded but part of a narrative repeated by Russia for years. "It's crazy, sometimes not even they can explain what they are referring to," complained Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba.

However, an opinion piece by state-run news agency Ria Novosti made clear that "denazification is inevitably also de-Ukrainisation" - in effect erasing the modern state.

And it is Russia that is now accused by the international community of carrying out war crimes. Several countries including the US and Canada go further and call it genocide.

After so much destruction, the Russian leader's words ring very hollow now: "It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory; we do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force."

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