"Putin wants to strangle Ukraine like a boa constrictor!" Military expert explains Russia's war strategy
Created: 02/22/2022, 09:12
By: Klaus Rimpel
The world is looking at Ukraine with concern.
Is Russia's President Vladimir Putin now igniting the next level of escalation?
© picture alliance/dpa/Pool Sputnik Kremlin/AP |
Alexei Nikolsky
Former US General Ben Hodges explains Putin's real intentions with his invasion of Ukraine.
"The West has to stick together now," he says.
Munich - In the book Future War, military experts draw a scenario of future wars with artificially generated corona viruses and cyber attacks.
In the Ukraine crisis, many of the gloomy forecasts seem to be coming true - Russia is accompanying its military deployment with increased cyber attacks and propaganda lies.
The
Münchner Merkur
spoke to one of the authors, the former commander of the US Army in Europe, retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges.
Does Ukraine have a military chance against the Russian army?
Frederick Ben Hodges: It will be a protracted, bloody war with thousands of deaths and great suffering among civilians.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees will flee to the EU.
Russia is clearly superior in the Black Sea - but ground forces don't have that much of an advantage over the Ukrainians.
150,000 soldiers may sound like a lot at first - but that's just twice as many people as you can fit in Munich's Allianz Arena!
And Ukraine is a huge country - they cannot conquer Kiev, at best they can encircle it.
And the resistance will continue even after defeat.
They believe that Putin doesn't want to conquer all of Ukraine - why is he going to the expense of this massive military deployment?
Hodges: He wants to strangle Ukraine like a boa constrictor!
Vladimir Putin can already block all Ukrainian exports with his Black Sea fleet.
He wants to destroy Ukraine's economy in order to oust President Zelensky and get a government in Kiev that is more accommodating and less pro-Western.
Putin can achieve that without a major war.
Retired General Ben Hodges (right) and editor Klaus Rimpel © Markus Götzfried
Ukraine crisis comes to a head - former US General Ben Hodges explains Putin's strategy
What good does that do for Putin anyway?
Hodges: I think Putin's real goal is to formally take power in Belarus!
I am assuming that Belarusian President Lukashenko will retire in the summer and that Belarus will then be annexed to Russia.
Putin will be the head of state of this union and will no longer have to deal with elections.
Ukraine is to become a “failed state” that is so devastated that it can never become a member of the EU.
And then Ukraine will become a kind of Belarus 2.0.
What is the right strategy to prevent all of this?
Hodges: Western unity is really important now.
The pressure must be kept up, the door for dialogue must remain open.
The fact that China emphasized Ukraine's sovereignty at the security conference will not leave Putin indifferent.
But we must also help Ukraine!
I met President Selensky three days ago and he really impressed me when he said: I don't need US or German soldiers, but I need the money so that we can defend ourselves.
Germany has a key role here, also as a moral authority.
Ukraine conflict escalates: Putin sends troops to eastern Ukraine
Doesn't Putin have a point with his criticism of NATO's eastward expansion?
Hodges: He's just using the NATO issue, but what Putin really fears is the encroachment of liberal democracies into his sphere of influence.
But the statement "You mustn't become wealthy like the Estonians" is more difficult to convey to one's own population than to stir up the fear that a defense alliance like NATO would threaten them.
After all, NATO did not "expand" and subjugate others like an empire - states like Poland or Estonia wanted to get under a protective umbrella as quickly as possible, which says a lot about their relationship with Russia.
Neither Moscow nor Washington can dictate anything to sovereign states in the 21st century, which is why verbal US promises over the heads of those concerned would be worthless if they ever existed after the collapse of the USSR.
The interview was conducted by Klaus Rimpel.
