Only the Russian Occupation of Washington Would Be a Victory for Moscow in Ukraine, Satanovsky Says ‘Almost Not Joking’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 1 – Saying that he is “almost not joking, Yevgeny Satanovsky says that the Ukrainian war will end with a victory for Russia only when Russian troops occupy Washington, D.C. “In the past, there was the Reichstag, but today it plays a secondary role as does the Eiffel Tower or the Tower of London.”

            The president of the Moscow Institute for the Near East is one of eight experts that Kazan’s Business-Gazeta surveyed as talks between Russia and Ukraine have begun with the question “what outcome of the special operation could be called a victory for Russia?” (business-gazeta.ru/article/545458).

            Nikolay Svanidze says “the best outcome would be not a military victory or a military defeat but some kind of compromises. This would be ideal” because it would avoid the terrible consequences either of the other outcomes would entail, “but I fear,” he says, that now this will be difficult to achieve.”

            Sergey Markov, a political commentator, says “victory should involve above all the liquidation of the system of terror with the help of which has been bult an anti-Russia” in Ukraine. This system of terror, he continues, which has been built by the US and the UK “must be demolished in order to allow the population to make a free choice about its fate.”

            Yevgeny Minchenko, a political technologist, says that in his view, “both sides are hostages to their own propaganda,” with Russian support for the war increasing and Ukrainian confidence that it has already won. As far as what constitutes victory, “even officials do not have a single idea about that.”

            Nikolay Starikov, a publicist, says victory will be achieved when the Ukrainian army lays down its arms and when investigators begin to determine who has committed crimes.

            Konstantin Zatulin, a political technologist, says that Russia will have won when Ukraine is no longer in a position to present any “potential threat to the development of the Russian Federation and out citizens and to the interrelationship between Russian and Ukrainian peoples anywhere in the world.” Russia will have to control that process as no Ukrainian regime could.

Mikhail Vinogradov, another political technologist, says that it is “obvious” that not everyone in the Russian elite wants to keep fighting but they aren’t in a position to set the weather because they fear any actions in that direction will be used against them in Moscow given that the Kremlin will likely turn on any “defeatism.”

And Yakov Geller , an official who oversees Tatarstan for Moscow, says that he sees no sign that Moscow is really about to change the sweeping goals Putin announced at the outset but that it is always possible that Moscow will choose to declare whatever it has achieved a victory in order to end the burden of war and turn to other tasks.