Ukraine: How Russia's war aims are changing

"We will help the Ukrainian people get rid" of the absolutely anti-popular and anti-historic regime," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Egypt on July 24. As reported by Russia's TASS news agency, Lavrov added: "We sympathize with the Ukrainian people, who deserve a much better life."

However, fewer than three months earlier, he had said something very different: that Moscow's goal was to protect the people in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Back then, he had maintained that the Kremlin was not seeking a change of power in Kyiv.  

DW has compiled a summary of how statements on Moscow's war aims in Ukraine, made by  Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and other Russian representatives, have shifted over the past five months.

July: 'Geographical objectives' extended

On July 20, Lavrov told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti and the Russian broadcaster RT that Moscow was continuing to pursue its objective of "denazification, demilitarization in the sense that there are no threats to our security or military threats from the territory of Ukraine." This time, though, he added: "Now the geography is different; it's far from being just the DPR and LPR [the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics], it's also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number of other territories."

Lavrov did not rule out expanding Russia's "geographical objectives" in the war against Ukraine beyond the so-called People's Republics, adding that it made no sense to negotiate with Ukraine "in the current situation."

These comments provoked very strong reactions in the Ukrainian media, which speculated that Russia could be "preparing the ground for the annexation of southern Ukraine."

May: 'The goal is not regime change'

Just three months before his July 24 statement in Cairo, Lavrov was still maintaining that Russia was absolutely not trying to overthrow the President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government in Kyiv. "We are not demanding that he surrender," Lavrov told Italian broadcaster Mediaset on May 1. "We are demanding that he give the order to release all civilians and to stop resisting. Our goal does not include regime change in Ukraine. This is the specialty of the US. They do it all over the world," he said.

In the same interview, which was the first that he had given to European TV journalists since the war began, he said that Russia's true objective was to "ensure the safety of people in eastern Ukraine, so that they won't be threatened by militarization and Nazification and that no threats against the Russian Federation emanate from Ukrainian territory." 

Later, on May 31, at a meeting with Hissein Ibrahim Taha, the secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Lavrov expressed the view that "Western colleagues" were exploiting the situation in Ukraine to prevent the "emergence of a multipolar world."

March and April: Ukrainian neutrality; containing NATO

Immediately after the start of the war, it was the alleged threat to Russia from the West — and NATO in particular — that was the main focus of the speeches of Russian politicians. They kept reiterating that Ukraine must be neutral, as that was the only way to prevent it from joining NATO. Vladimir Putin also emphasized this at a meeting with representatives of Russian airlines on March 5. He added that, were there to be a conflict between Russia and NATO, everyone was aware of what the consequences would be.

A few days earlier, on March 1 — a week after the start of the invasion — Russian  Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency: "The main thing for us is to protect the Russian Federation from the military threat posed by Western countries, who are trying to use the Ukrainian people in the fight against our country."

But toward the end of March, after the failure of the Russian offensive against the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, there was a marked shift in Moscow's rhetoric. "Denazification and demilitarization" receded into the background; support for the Donbas, and conflict resolution through negotiation took precedence. On March 25, for example, the deputy head of the General Staff of the Russian Forces, Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi, stated at a briefing that the "main goal [of the Russian special operation] is to provide assistance to the people of the DNR and LNR, who have been subjected to genocide by the Kiev [Kyiv] regime for eight years." to provide assistance to  "the complete regime for eight years."

In April, however, Russian officials again switched their focus to confrontation with NATO and the United States. On April 11, Sergey Lavrov told the Russian state broadcaster Rossiya 24: "Our special military operation is designed to put an end to the reckless expansion and reckless course toward total dominance of the United States — and the other Western countries under it — in the international arena." The West, he said, had turned Ukraine into "a springboard for the final suppression and subordination of Russia" — and he stressed that Russia would never accept a position subordinate to the West.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, has also spoken of preventing Ukraine from becoming a member of NATO. On June 29, he told the Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty that this would be more dangerous for Russia than Sweden and Finland joining the alliance. In the same interview, he insisted that Crimea would be a part of Russia, forever. "Any attempt to encroach on Crimea is a declaration of war against our country," he warned. "And if this is done by a NATO member-state, this means conflict with the entire North Atlantic alliance; a World War Three. A complete catastrophe." Vladimir Putin had said the same in March, at his meeting with airline representatives.

Feb. 24: 'Protecting the people of Donbas.'

The supposed threat to Russia from further eastward NATO expansion to the east was already a key theme of Putin's televised address of February 24 announcing the Russian invasion, which he described as a "special military operation." He said that "the purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev [Kyiv] regime." This, he continued, was why Russia was "committed to the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine," pledging to "bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation."

Putin also declared: "It is not our plan to occupy Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force."

This article was originally written in Russian.