ISW explains what is behind Putin's statements about threat of Russia's collapse

This was reported by the Institute for the Study of War. 

American analysts point out that Russian officials are promoting an information operation that falsely presents Russia's war in Ukraine as an existential war, on the outcome of which the continued existence of the Russian Federation depends. 

In particular, on February 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that he did not know whether "such an ethnic group as the Russian people can survive in the form in which it exists today" if the West succeeds in "destroying the Russian Federation and establishing control over its fragments." 

The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, expressed similar theses in his essay "Points of No Return."

At the same time, no Western official called for the collapse of the Russian Federation, and world leaders emphasized that Ukraine's goal is only to liberate the occupied territories. 

"Putin’s language is designed to fuel support for the war in Russia and stoke fears in the West of the instability that would follow the collapse of Russia to deter Western support to Ukraine and persuade the West to coerce Kyiv into accepting Russian demands," ISW concluded. 

• On February 25, Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia is fighting in Ukraine against an entire empire of enemies who allegedly aim to "strangle" Russia. 

• On February 26, Vladimir Putin said that the West was allegedly seeking to divide Russia into parts, which would threaten the existence of the Russian ethnos.