00:00Russian president has reportedly told Donald Trump that one of his demands is full control of Donbass.
00:10The region in eastern Ukraine with a pre-war population of 6.5 million people includes two regions Donetsk and Luhansk.
00:21Moscow's demands regarding it are not new. They aren't even from 2022.
00:27Putin has been trying to occupy Donbass for 11 years since Russia's first invasion of Ukraine.
00:32But even with the fallout war of 2022, Moscow still failed to occupy all of Donbass militarily
00:39and hopes to do it now with the maximalist demands under Trump's mediation.
00:44The US-based Institute for the Study of War estimates that Russia will be unable to seize all of Donetsk region rapidly by force
00:54since Moscow has been trying to do so for over a decade and failed.
00:59Russia could only rapidly seize all of Donetsk region if Ukraine concedes to Putin's demands and withdraws from it.
01:07Putin's claim that Russian forces will inevitably seize all of Donetsk region if the war continues is false.
01:16The Russian campaign for Chasivyar began in May 2023 after Russian forces seized Bahmut east of Chasivyar
01:24and has then intensified a year later in April 2024.
01:28It has taken Russian forces 26 months to advance roughly 11 km from western Bahmut to the western edge of Chasivyar.
01:36The Pokrovsk assault campaign began in February 2024 after the seizure of Avdiyevka.
01:42Moscow has dedicated multiple efforts to seizing Pokrovsk through frontal assaults, envelopment or encirclement,
01:48all of which have thus been unsuccessful after more than 18 months.
01:53Putin previously said that he also wants to control two more regions of Ukraine – Zaporozhya and Kherson.
02:01This, according to the UK Defense Ministry, would take Moscow four years and a half
02:06and two more million Russian casualties killed and wounded on top of one million troops
02:13that Russia has already lost in casualties since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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