Russian Colonel General commanding the Central Military District: war in Ukraine "an intermediate stage" in a longer war for Eastern Europe, which Russia "will have to attack".
Russian Colonel General commanding the Central Military District: war in Ukraine "an intermediate stage" in a longer war for Eastern Europe, which Russia "will have to attack".
Speaking to an interviewer from Russian state media channel Россия 1, Col. Gen. Mordvichev says the quiet part out loud regarding the broader goals of Russian policy: namely that the ambition of conquering Ukraine is only a stepping stone to attacking the rest of Eastern Europe, a course of action which he presents as a necessity ("we will have to attack").
I would opine that statements like these, brazenly uttered to domestic mass media by a senior military figure, are indicative of the realities of Russian ambitions: to revive Russian imperial domination of Eastern Europe by force of arms.
They literally already failed step one of that plan. Does anyone actually think they can do what this guy is suggesting?
They failed in their thunder run, but the west is giving Ukraine only enough aid to keep surviving, not winning. For everyone's sake, including the russian people, we have to make it clear to Putin, that he can't just throw a few million more men into the grinder to eventually get Ukraine to relent.
Ukraine is winning, just not as quickly as we'd like.
I know some speculate that the west is interested in drawing this out, to bleed the Russian military as much as possible.
But this war is harmful to the west too, most obviously the economy is generally slowing down because of the increased energy cost. Also hunger in African countries could increase unwanted immigration to the west. That's apart from the purely humanitarian aspect, of innocent Ukrainians suffering the worst of it.
Of course if you are cynical enough to want the war to drag on, the humanitarian aspects are probably irrelevant. But even for the cynical, there are reasons to want Ukraine to win quickly. The Russian war machine is already ruined. Both their capability, but more importantly the poor performance should make any Russian leader think twice before using it again.
It seems implausible in the short term, but if statements like these are in any way reflective of long term strategic goals, or even official rhetoric, it's still ominous. Of course, given the fact it's state TV, it could be the General purely reciting the party line to give the public the impression that the war is going vastly better than it really is. But it also reminds me of what were purported to be strategic planning documents leaked by FSB sources early in the war, from when Russia still believed they'd take Kyiv in three days. It described a plan to conquer the country in weeks, then present their army on the Polish border as a fait accompli and declare a no-fly zone over the Baltics as an ultimatum to NATO.
Whether that's true or not, subsequent events showed that the ZSRF was incapable of even that plan, as you say. But the very level of disparity between nominal and actual capabilities that led Moscow to believe such a thing was possible to begin with certainly doesn't speak to their ability to make accurate estimations of what their forces are capable of.
The way I see it is that the real problem is that they wanted to. Normal people don't want to kill their neighbors and take their things, even if they could. This also applies to most countries. The fact that the Russians are thinking about invading other European countries is a problem by itself.
No matter how the Ukraine war ends, Russia will find itself staring down the barrels of a lot of guns. All of Europe is now united against them (OK, there's Hungary, but they're at best an annoyance) and rearming like crazy. Russia, on the other hand, has shown just how weak it is and whatever strength they had is now squandered and will take decades to rebuild. Any threats they make should just be answered with "you and what army, Valodja?".
Also Switzerland and Austria are happy to stand by and watch the genocide of their neighbors.
Russia is demanding a world war. Pre-emptive strikes on Russian assets is clearly justified right now.