Putin claims he should have launched full-scale war against Ukraine earlier – ISW

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he should have launched a full-scale war against Ukraine before February 2022 but did not say when exactly.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports this.

"Putin repeated his latest assertion that he should have violated the ceasefire he had imposed on Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 by launching a full-scale invasion even earlier than February 2022," the report says.

Analysts point out that in an interview with Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin on December 22, Putin repeated that Russia should have launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine before February 2022 but added that it was impossible to say precisely when this would have happened.

The Russian dictator accused Ukraine and the West of allegedly "misleading Russia" and failing to implement the Minsk agreements, which he said gave the West time to prepare Ukraine for future "military actions" against Russia.

Putin said that Russia should have "prepared for this" and "chosen the right moment" to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine rather than "waiting for the moment when nothing can be done."

"Putin failed to mention that Ukraine worked to strengthen its military as a defensive response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukrainian territory and the launch of a war in the country's east," ISW experts note.

The report recalls that Putin made similar statements during his televised press conference "Direct Line" on December 19, when he said that he would have decided on a full-scale invasion earlier if he could do it again.

On December 19, Putin also stated that Ukraine was not complying with the Minsk agreements and that Russia had "spontaneously" invaded Ukraine in 2022.

"The Minsk II Accords were notably extremely favorable to Russia, placing no obligations on Moscow – a party to the negotiations as an alleged neutral mediator.

The Accords established a "ceasefire" that Russian proxies continually violated with Russian support," the ISW report said.

Key conclusions of ISW for December 22:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin repeated his latest assertion that he should have violated the ceasefire he had imposed on Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 by launching a full-scale invasion even earlier than February 2022.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly struck an oil depot in the Oryol region with drones on the night of December 21 to 22.
• Russian forces recently executed more Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) on the battlefield.
• Ukrainian forces recently regained lost positions in the western Zaporizhzhia region, and Russian troops recently advanced near Kupiansk, Toretsk, and Pokrovsk and in the Kursk region.
• North Korea may have transferred at least four additional ballistic missiles to Russia.

It should be noted that President Volodymyr Zelensky recently said that he did not take Donald Trump's campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine "in 24 hours" literally and stated that Ukraine could not legally recognize the temporarily occupied territories as Russian.