Putin's evil goals

There is a certain triumphalism circulating about the Ukrainian army's ability to fight the Russian invasion, not to mention the support it is receiving from the United States and many EU countries. Ukraine's president, Volodimir Zelenski, is calling for more and better weapons to be able to resist, and even to be able to recapture some important enclaves and, above all, to avoid the total fall of a city as strategic as Mariupol. 

One misses the fact that Zelensky has not yet intervened in the Spanish Congress of Deputies. His tireless activity as the visible head of the Ukrainian resistance defies the risks he runs every time he speaks in a parliament or before an international forum such as Doha. His technological and military advisors prove to be above the Russians who are only capable of assassinating a Russian journalist, Oksana Baulina, with a precision bombing when she was geolocated in Kiev. Baulina worked for Russian opposition leader Navalni, imprisoned by Putin.

Smartphones facilitate the work of journalists, but also that of opposition assassins. But the rage and indignation over the deaths of thousands of people, on both sides, can mislead us into making certain mistakes about the Kremlin's latest political and military moves. In addition to triumphalism, some relief is conveyed by the statement of the reappeared Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu about the intention to set their sights on what they call the liberation of the Donbas region of Donetsk and Luhansk. 

For days now, there has been talk of a reorganisation of the Russian troops sent, curiously enough, with armoured vehicles and tanks that are many years old, with open communications that are more like a Chinese walkie-talkie, with a poor and misguided logistics chain and with low morale among their soldiers after a month of campaigning in the Ukrainian cold. Putin and his generals' public statements should not be trusted.

Remember when he assured day after day that he was not going to invade Ukraine, only to launch his offensive with old weapons and modern submarine-launched ballistic missiles and other systems tested in Syria and now exhibited as if it were a bloody International Arms Fair where the use of abominable cluster bombs and thermobaric bombs did not matter. 

The big question that is the biggest concern is: will he dare to use chemical or biological weapons if Putin does not achieve his evil goals? Moreover, international experts say, he may withdraw his troops from enclaves such as Kiev because he will use limited-range but devastating tactical nuclear weapons to achieve Zelenski's surrender and block NATO. Putin will sell his defeat dearly if his people are unable to stop him first.