Putin believes Russia’s summer offensive should capture major part of Ukraine – analyst Yizhak

This was said on air by Oleksiy Yizhak, analyst at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, during an appearance on Espreso.

“There’s one thing becoming increasingly obvious: for today’s Russia, war is the main tool of foreign policy. The Russian Federation simply doesn’t know how to function internally or reach its goals any other way. Culture, soft power, diplomacy — none of it works. Russia has lost all authority,” he said.

Yizhak added that Russia still holds on to some military capability.

“Putin is wrong, he still believes in the 'couple of weeks' idea we heard in Ukraine a few years ago. Now Trump is also talking about 'two weeks.' In Putin’s mind, these ‘two weeks’ are tied to the summer offensive, which he thinks should result in the capture of a large part of Ukraine. The whole world sees that Russia doesn’t have the means for this, but it’s impossible to stop Putin from pursuing this destructing plan,” the analyst said.

In his view, the general agreement now is that Ukraine, with support from its allies, must hold the line and break this summer push without creating unnecessary chaos.

“That will be the next chance to show Russia that this war isn’t working. Right now, they think Ukraine is weak and that the summer offensive will succeed. It won’t, but Russia won’t accept that. Even Trump is saying Putin doesn’t have many strong cards left, but Putin still believes he can get something out of this. Convincing Russia to destroy the summer offensive. It’s good that not only Ukraine understands now. There may be another chance to push Russia to stop and finally abandon war as its go-to foreign policy tool,” Yizhak concluded.