Great victory for Moscow, but from which the Russian authorities have not yet made much
Russia announced total control of the Lugansk region, more than three years after Vladimir Putin ordered the large -scale invasion of Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands of troops to break out in the regions of the neighboring neighboring country.
This is not the case with Lugansk, or not totally, at least. Even though Vladimir Putin wants to make this a great victory, it must be remembered that the war has taken place in Lugansk, as in Donetsk, since 2014.
It is true that it was not the Russian army that was there, but they were separatist and soldiers of the Wagner group, which puts Kremlin, even indirectly, in the conflict.
The announcement that Lugansk, a region with over 26,000 square kilometers, is now totally Russian was made by the governor appointed by Russia to lead the region.
An announcement made on Russia’s state television that is one of Vladimir Putin’s great victories in the war, as it is the only region Russia completely controls, even though it has illegally attached, through referendum, Donetsk, Zaporizehzia and Kerson.
“The territory of the Lugansk Popular Republic was fully released – 100%,” said Leonid Pasechnik, a man born in the Soviet Union that leads that region.
And it was all that has been said, since neither Russia seems to have done very wide with the conquest, nor did Ukraine confirm or deny the loss of Lugansk.
A territory that will be difficult to try to recover from Ukraine. Militarily, it seems to be unable to make a countereight of this dimension, and Russia will hardly give up one of the two regions that always said – the other is Donetsk, which with Lugansk was Donbass.
Vladimir Putin has already warned that the fact that these four regions are part of Russia – which is not internationally recognized – entitles him to Moscow to put them under his nuclear doctrine. The same is to say that Kremlin understands that he can do everything to maintain control over these territories.
Russia controls about 19% of the territory internationally recognized as Ukraine. In addition to the entire Lugansk region, he also dominates 70% of Donetsk, Zaporizehzia and Kherson, being present in Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk.
Out of the equation in these accounts is the giant Crimea Peninsula, belonging to the Russian territory since 2014.
