Russia is preparing to declare victory in its war with Ukraine within days, Kyiv’s military intelligence agency has claimed.
The GUR, the Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, has claimed the Russian despot is poised to claim Russia has defeated the western powers, including NATO, in a public address to mark the war’s third anniversary. Monday, February 24, is the all-important anniversary of the war triggered when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
While the conflict’s origins date back to 2014, when Putin grabbed Crimea and swathes of eastern Ukraine in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the GUR said it will use the “round date” to declare it has won the “all out war”. In the same celebration, it said, Putin will declare “Russian victory over NATO”.
The agency said today: “Russia is preparing to declare an alleged ‘victory’ in the war against Ukraine by the ‘round date’ – 24 February 2025, the third anniversary of the beginning of the full-scale war. Moreover, these plans may also include a ‘Russian victory over NATO’, as Muscovite propaganda has long described the war against Ukraine as a war with the Alliance.”
The move – if it happens – comes amid intense moves to end the war led by Donald Trump and his administration, but with fears in Europe and Ukraine that a settlement will give the advantage to Russia, rewarding Putin for his military aggression. The GUR added that Russia’s special services have been instructed to “make the most” of the growing divisions.
It continued: “The special services of the aggressor state of Russia have been instructed by the Kremlin leaders to make the most of the intensification of diplomatic efforts by the new US administration to end the Russian-Ukrainian war and the bilateral meeting of the US and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia on 18 February 2025 in subversive information and psychological campaigns.”
A key aim is to “cover the status of an aggressor and war criminal isolated by the civilised world with the cloak of a supposedly ready for peaceful settlement ‘constructive side of the conflict”. Countries hostile to Russia gaining territory through its war of aggression will be branded “enemies of peace”.
Putin’s propaganda machine and intelligence services “on instructions from the Kremlin, are stepping up efforts to incite disbelief among Ukrainian society, destabilise the situation inside our country and discredit Ukraine among partner states that provide critical military assistance to our Security and Defence Forces in the fight against the occupiers”, said the GUR, headed by Lt-Gen Kyrylo Budanov.
“The key narratives of hostile information attacks include ‘The West betrayed Ukraine’, ‘Neither Moscow nor Washington cares about the opinion of Europeans and Ukrainians’, ‘The US and Russia agreed on everything behind Ukraine’s back’, ‘The Ukrainian government is illegitimate’, ‘The Ukrainian army is losing at the front’, and ‘Corrupt officials are stealing billions of dollars of US aid from Ukraine’.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed this week that Donald Trump is a victim of Russian “disinformation”. Budanov has predicted a ceasefire this year – but warned it may not last. He said: “It’s a paradoxical situation. Despite the fact that the starting positions of the parties are diametrically opposed, that’s the only way it’s possible.
“At the same time, I think that this year we will come to a ceasefire regime. How long it will be, how effective it will be, that is another question. But the fact that it will happen, I think it will happen. There are most of the ingredients for it to happen.”
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