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Notes -
What were their formal goals? What did Putin actually say at the start of the war?
Demilitarization, denazification and neutrality. He was saying this in early 2022, they constituted the original peace offer and he's still maintaining these demands today. These three were the primary goals of the war.
Demilitarization looks like it'll be reached at some point if only via attrition and Ukrainian military defeat. Denazification = installing some kind of more acceptable government - still up in the air. Neutrality, still up in the air.
Then there are various formally annexed provinces of Ukraine, some of which Russia has control of on the ground. These were added as goals with the constitutional changes in September 2022.
Russia has thus achieved partial success on 2 of 4 of their primary goals and seems to enjoy the upper hand on the battlefield. This we can observe since the original US-Ukrainian goal (pre-2014 borders for Ukraine) has been largely abandoned.
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