Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to declare war against Ukraine on Victory Day, May 9– the day Russia celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II, western and Ukrainian officials believe.
.” Putin is also reportedly considering holding sham trials of Ukrainians that Russia has claimed have been supportive of Nazis, in an imitation of the Nuremberg trials that worked to hold German Nazi leadership accountable.
The symbolic Victory Day comes at a moment where Putin needs all the help he can get after his forces have been faltering for weeks. After his troops failed to take Kyiv and achieve some of his more ambitious goals in Ukraine,to go after Eastern Ukraine, in a kind of plan B for Russia.
The date could, of course, have no bearing on whether Putin declares war. The future of Putin’s war in Ukraine will depend on what happens on the ground in Eastern Ukraine, not a date, Michael Kofman, the research program director in the Russia Studies Program at CNA, a Virginia-based national security research organization, told The Daily Beast.
“They still have not solved all their logistics problem, and quite frankly, there’s… a risk and casualty aversion that we continue to see by the Russians now, not just in the air, but on the ground,” the senior U.S. defense official said. The Russians are being “very, very cautious, very tepid.”
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