Lucas Martín: "Putin wants a puppet government in Ukraine and will do anything to achieve it"

In the latest edition of 'De cara al mundo', our radio programme on Onda Madrid, we had the participation of Lucas Martín, international analyst, career military officer and contributor to Atalayar. Martín gave us the keys to the armed conflict that is taking place in Eastern Europe, and what Vladimir Putin's objectives are.

You said Putin would attack Ukraine on the 23rd and Putin has attacked Ukraine on the 23rd, how did you know?

It was an approximate date, but it was clear from all the indications that the attack would take place that week. As I wrote in Atalayar, Russia's build-up of forces was not normal and was unsustainable over time, given the cost involved. As soon as they began to occupy the areas they had occupied and disperse, it was clear that it was only a matter of days before the attack was launched. 

Militarily, Russia's superiority is unquestionable, but then what?

The first thing to clarify is what Russia's real objectives would be: on the one hand, to take control of the two self-proclaimed independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, extending the border to the Dnieper and, on the other hand, to overthrow the Kiev government in order to install a puppet government. What Russia will not do under any circumstances is enter large cities or densely populated areas to fight; right now they are encircling Kiev, but they are not going to occupy the city fighting house to house, because that would entail a very high human cost and would mean engaging in a fight against the insurgency that makes no sense and would only wear Russia down. Let us remember that it is in Russia's interest for the conflict to be very quick because of its capabilities; Russia has learned from Afghanistan and is very clear about what it will not do.

There was talk of $1.5 billion worth of weapons entering Ukraine, and despite military shortcomings they have systems that are resilient enough to become an enemy that can do a lot of damage to the Russians.... 

There is a bit of a myth about this whole issue, a lot of weapons have indeed been supplied to Ukraine, mainly anti-tank missiles and man-portable air defence missiles, but actually the effectiveness of these missiles is good, although it is becoming clear that they are not as effective as expected. The reason is that these weapons are operated by one or two infantrymen who draw their sharpshooters and obviously holding your own against 20 tanks and waiting for them to be 800 metres away before you can fire... you have to hold your own, it's not easy. Obviously they will cause casualties, they are causing fewer casualties today than I would expect.

Will Putin stop or are other countries at risk?

I doubt very much that Putin will touch any NATO country, he is very clear about his capabilities and he knows that this would be the end of him as Russia's leader, unless he uses nuclear weapons as he has been threatening to do in recent days. Putin wants to get his "buffer zone", he wants a puppet government in Ukraine and he will do whatever it takes to achieve that, the rest is just threats and bluster. Unless someone gets out of hand or something happens that we don't expect, conflicts often erupt and things get out of hand by mistake or unintentionally. 

You know how a war starts, but you don't know how it ends...

Indeed. 

Personally, I think Ukraine will be the end of Putin, because of all the wear and tear it will cause him. It's true that now, with the sanctions, both Russian oligarchs and companies have had time to put their money in safety.

I'm a bit more sceptical, the sanctions are not going to have an immediate effect, so they are not going to stop what Russia is doing, they will have an effect in the medium term. Russia has been living with sanctions for 10 years, they have got used to living with them and looking for ways to get around them. Sanctions will hurt, as is logical, but not much, let's not forget that China is behind them and has lifted restrictions on imports of grain from Russia, a very important issue, and then Russia continues to have the gas trump card and also something that affects Spain, let's not forget that the country on which we depend for our gas supply, Algeria, is an ally of Russia. At any given moment Putin may have the key to the gas pipelines. 

These expectations make our hair stand on end, thank goodness that Spain has 6 ports with gasification capacity and we could bring gas from the United States or Qatar or other places....

In this case the problem would not be the ports, but the price and the ships, the number of ships with the capacity to transport gas is limited, therefore, a competition would begin to see who gets the ships to take the gas to their country