What next for Russia?

WHEN RUSSIAN and Ukrainian negotiators met in Istanbul to discuss a potential settlement on March 29th Alexander Fomin, Russia’s deputy defence minister, had something to offer. “In order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations,” he said, Russia would “drastically reduce” operations around Kyiv and Chernihiv, a city 150km to the north.

According to previous Russian announcements, backing off from Ukraine’s capital was not a gesture of much consequence. “Our main aim,” a trio of generals said at a defence-ministry briefing on March 25th, had always been “liberating Donbas”—two Russian speaking provinces in the east of the country. Before the invasion the Russian proxies in the two “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk had occupied about a third of Donbas. Russian troops have since grabbed more of the territory, including parts of Mariupol, a now ruined port on the Sea of Azov. This meant that the “main tasks of the first stage of the operation” had been completed. The assault on Kyiv, in this telling, had been a mere feint designed to distract Ukrainian forces from the real action in Donbas.