By ERNEST SIPES
Friday’s meeting between Donald Trump and Vladmir Putin surprisingly made Alaska a setting of great importance for the Russo-Ukrainian war. While Alaskans seemed generally pleased with all the attention, what is potentially overlooked by many were some clues in the meeting to a vital question: What exactly were the original Russian goals for the invasion of Ukraine?
Was the objective a countrywide assault and then an occupation of Ukraine by Russian forces? Or were the goals more modest, and the continued comparisons to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 just a method to stoke fear of the Russian Bear again on a rampage for world domination? Perhaps as is often the case in politics, the answer is more nuanced.
Following the Alaska meeting, unofficial sources quoted in Reuters report that Putin proposed to stop the fighting in exchange for Russia permanently taking the eastern Oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk. If this proposal is eventually confirmed as true, it may well signal what the original Russian invasion plan was.
Having researched Russian Federation military operations for different media outlets and one “think tank” in three separate conflicts, I have learned to discount most of what I read of these engagements between post-Soviet republics and Russia. This is true in political goals, but also in many other areas of the conflicts, such as casualty figures and military equipment loses.
I first saw this phenomenon in the Ossetian War during the Russian invasion of the Republic of Georgia in August 2008, when I had a short-term contract as a reporter for the English language newspaper Georgia Today. In that instance, the exaggerations were the Georgian figures for civilian loses during the Russian occupation of the city of Gori and accusations of Russian war crimes during the occupation.
Another example was during Russian operations in Syria in support of Assad while covering the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in 2012 on the Lebanon-Syrian border. Which brings us to what Russia named the labelled the Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
Put simply, Russian casualty figures may well be overblown to discredit Russian efforts. Mind you, I have not supported Russia in any of these operations. We don’t know for sure how many Russian or Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in this conflict. Because, put simply, both sides have proven themselves untrustworthy.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine puts Russian casualty figures at 1,067,100 as of early August, 2025. By contrast, BBC Russian Media Services and Mediazona records Russian casualties at somewhere slightly at 119,154 in mid-July. Official Russian government press releases stopped releasing casualty figures early in the war. The Russian Ministry of Defense stopped reporting losses in September, 2022 with slightly less than 6,000 killed to that date.
Ukrainian losses are equally hard to pin down. The Russian news source TASS reported that Ukraine had reached the 1 million casualty mark in late December, 2024.
Interestingly, there was some rare questioning of these figures during a recent Al Arabia panel discussion. In it, the issue was that Russia officially began the Ukrainian invasion with 1,300,000 soldiers in uniform. In the broadcast, Dr. Elie Al Hindy, a Security and Global Affairs expert, makes a valid point that the casualty reports as stated may be in fact be inflated, as to have lost that many soldiers would be massively disruptive to Russian military operations.
Yet, all that aside, the question of whether Russia intended to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine at the outset of the invasion remains that unanswered, at least in most western sources.
When trying to formulate an answer to this question, it must be understood that the relationship between Russia and Ukraine is a long one. And before traveling to Ukraine during this war I never realized it is much more complex question than I ever imagined.
To illustrate this, I had an about two-hour conversation with a Polish computer technician named Vasily who sat next to me on the plane out of Warsaw about this exact issue. And while he admitted he was surprised that the invasion had even occurred, he was not as dismissive of Russian methods and goals as you might think. More than once the concept of being Russian as not just a nationality, but instead an ethno/spiritual state of being, was expressed by Vasily to me.
So, with that being said, I would rather comment on some specifics and throw in a little speculation that I will state to some extent as fact, due to personal observation while in the Ukraine.
It needs to be noted that the only evidence that Russia was bent on a Ukraine invasion and subsequent occupation apparently came from a single source, “The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.” This British think-tank stated in late November 2022 that it had obtained a series of documents signed by Putin that outlined a plan to subdue Ukraine in a 10-day period, then execute the leaders of the country and force uncooperative Ukrainians into what appeared to be Soviet-style “reeducation camps.” The documents have never been shown to anyone outside the organization. Even today the RUSI website states “As the underlying source material for much of this report cannot yet be made public, this should be understood as testimony rather than as an academic study. Given the requirements for operational security, it is necessarily incomplete.”
Putin has never disclosed exactly what the goals of the invasion were, besides stating in 2022 it was “denazification and demilitarization” of Ukraine. Interestingly, a Moscow Times article on January 23, 2025, reported that “unnamed sources” recounted that Putin stated that Russia had achieved its key objectives in the Ukraine Special Military Operation.
So, what are we to believe were the actual Russian goals for the invasion of Ukraine?
It appears to me Moscow (and I am choosing to use Moscow to refer to the Russian Federation governing mechanism, as to me it’s a bit simplistic to refer to one man as the leader of a nation with a representational body as is the Duma) always had a fixed series of goals in this war.
And those goals were for the most part accomplished by the third week of the invasion. Now we could argue over whether the Duma truly represents the people of the nation, but for this article that would be pointless.
I perceive Moscow’s goals from the outset of the Special Military Operation as:
- A permanent route to the Black Sea.
- The unification of areas perceived as belonging to Russia and whose citizens (a majority at least) desire to join Russia.
- A notice to the world that the lands that once formed the Soviet Bloc are still under the guidance of Moscow at some level.
- To discourage surrounding nations from joining NATO/EU.
- To illustrate that all of Eastern Europe is still under the influence of Moscow.
If we approach the situation with these points in mind, Russian actions (and sometimes lack of action) begin making a lot more sense.
If you accept that a decision had been made by Russia to only accomplish a relatively small set of specific goals as outlined above, it is easy to see that this is why there has been no out-and-out destruction of the infrastructure of Ukraine when it is well within the ability of Moscow to do so.
While riding on trains and buses through the Lviv, Ternopil, Khemelnyyskyy, Kiev, Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava, Kharkiv and Dnipro Oblasts as I did, I realized it doesn’t take a military genius to realize that the topography of Ukraine makes it very vulnerable to aerial bombardment. Additionally, the country suffers from antiquated transport facilities and rolling stock, particularly in regard to railroads. And railroads are still vitally important in Ukraine, as road maintenance is frequently overlooked by municipalities. Additionally, a large percentage of the rolling stock is still of Soviet vintage. And not as antiques for tourists to ride in mind you, but for the actual transportation of goods and military equipment.
Below is a map of Ukraine to illustrate this point.
I ask reader to examine it before and after they read my points.
If the goal of Moscow were to simply invade and occupy Ukraine, then the following would be their logical course of action to pursue:
- Strike and destroy bridges over the Dnipro River at Kiev, Cherkasy, Dnipro and Zaporiza using mass Shahed drone swarms as was used in the Donetsk, Sumy, and Chernihiv regions on 13 August.
- Destroy the key Dnipro-Holovnyi railway yard using a combination of the RS-28 Sarmat solid fuel ballistic missiles and/or the Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles. And, while it would be risky for aircrews, fighter bombers such as the Sukhoi 34 and the Tupolev 160 could participate as the less than 180-mile distance to Russian controlled airspace means loses could be manageable.
- Basically, rinse and repeat the above for the highways systems M06 and MO3 at Kiev, the M12 at Kirovgard, the MO4 at Dnipro and the M20 at Kharkiv.
- Send in any suitable aircraft to simply shoot up the rail and road systems after the above was completed.
Moscow could accomplish all of the above in approximately one week’s time. While aircraft losses would admittedly be high, the effect of cutting off the eastern Oblasts would arguably be worth the losses if simply conquering the country was goal of Russia. There is evidence that Moscow does indeed have the manpower and the aircraft to withstand what losses would occur if this strategy.
If such a series of steps were taken by Moscow, the following would happen:
- With the bridges knocked out, roads made impassable and railroads not functioning, no fuel, military equipment, food or goods would move west to east.
- Communications would be severely disrupted.
- Refugees would be swarming the bridge sites on the eastern side of the rivers, which would impede movement even more and produce almost an almost unimaginable humanitarian crisis. This would only be intensified if the attacks occurred in the winter months.
- Virtually no military equipment or reinforcements could be moved into the eastern areas in Donbas, Odessa etc. to reinforce to already taxed Ukrainian defenders.
- With the eastern part of the country cut-off, after a few weeks Ukrainian forces in the eastern Oblasts would be facing overwhelming Russian infantry pressure due to not being adequately supplied.
The Kremlin always had an end game for Ukraine; they just didn’t tell us.
And Russian ground forces have already accomplished these goals.
Since the outset, Moscow has been fighting the war it wants to fight.
The evidence is that the holding back of Russian aerial forces is part of an evolving plan, so that when the inevitable peace negotiations begin (as we may have just witnessed the beginning of in Anchorage on Friday), it will make it easier for both parties to come to terms.
However, if we begin hearing that train stations, railroad tracks, bus station, bridges, road junctions and electrical stations in western Ukraine are being systematically destroyed by Russia, then this may very well indicate there has been a change of plans by Moscow in terms of goals for this invasion.
My take is everything is being run on a timetable, with some obvious setbacks for Moscow. From the evidence I see, the Ukrainians and Russians are stubbornly dug in at pretty much the same static front lines in the eastern Oblasts that have existed since mid-2022. And if you can look at it dispassionately, brave Ukrainian soldiers are vainly throwing themselves upon Russian defensive lines even as I write this.
But do not believe what you are being told in the western media, that Russia is aiming for a WWII, Battle of the Bulge-style breakout to encircle Kiev and then force a surrender of the Ukrainian government.
As there is little evidence that this was ever Moscow’s plan for the Special Military Operation.
Ernest Sipes is former OCONUS contractor and reporter, most recently for the Berlin-based media organization Associated Reporters Abroad. He has eleven years of Middle East experience while working in Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman. In his position as a reporter, Mr. Sipes has visited and reported on Ukraine, Russia, Iraq, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Oman, Republic of Georgia and Somalia. He has published one book in Canada and authored numerous articles in a variety of journals, including USA Today and the Washington Times. https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ernest-sipes/10/702/aa6
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