Editorial: With pressure raised on Putin, both sides could be digging in

US President Joe Biden meets Ukrainian refugees and humanitarian aid workers in Warsaw, Poland. Photo / AP

Editorial

The month-old Russian war in Ukraine took a couple of significant steps to unknown ends at the weekend.

On Saturday, Moscow suggested that it could be reducing its focus from the wider Ukraine to areas by its border. Russia said it was close to completing the "first phase" and would attempt the "liberation" of Donbas in the east of Ukraine. However, yesterday Russia fired missiles at the city of Lviv in Ukraine's west.

Russia was unable to achieve a quick takeover of the capital Kyiv and has been stuck in a stalemate. The military has been losing troops - including senior soldiers - and equipment while failing to make many territorial advances, yet inflicting major damage on cities, towns and their residents through missiles and artillery shells.

The idea that the Kremlin would be able to subdue all of Ukraine enough to install a client regime, and then leave Russian troops to maintain it, has increasingly looked far-fetched.

It has looked for weeks as though President Vladimir Putin's Plan B would be to withdraw with some territory gains. In the east it has previously annexed Crimea and recognised two pro-Russian separatist statelets. But there are also targets in the northeast and south.

Mykhailo Podolyak, Ukraine's lead negotiator in talks with Russia, rejected the claim from the Russian Defence Ministry about Donbas. "Of course I don't believe that. They don't have interests in Donbas. Their main interests are Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and the south – to take Mariupol, and to close the Azov Sea … we see them regrouping and preparing more troops to send in."

The other major development occurred yesterday when United States President Joe Biden seemed to step up the heat on Putin, rather than helping to release the pressure valve to encourage the Russian leader to withdraw.

For the first time Biden appeared, by accident or design, to make a reference to regime change in Russia - although it could be interpreted as simply an expression of moral exasperation with Putin and the war.

"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden said of Putin during a speech in Poland.

If this was a reference to regime change it would be significant: Biden would leave Putin with no face-saving way out and himself with less room to manoeuvre. It would also be clear that Russia's relationship with the West would not improve while Putin was in charge.

A goal of regime change as US policy has previously been denied by senior Administration officials such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

The White House went into damage control with an official saying: "The President's point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region. He was not discussing Putin's power in Russia, or regime change".

Former US State Department analyst Aaron David Miller said on Twitter: "No correction will matter. Only confirms what Putin has believed all along — US policy is regime change, thereby ensuring this becomes a fight not just for Ukraine but for Putin's survival".

And Biden did stick the boot in elsewhere in his speech, noting the war had already been a strategic failure for Russia. Addressing Putin he said: "Don't even think of moving on one inch of Nato territory".

He added: "A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase a peoples' love for liberty. Brutality will never grind down their will to be free."

Biden's comments could reflect his thinking about the state of the war.

He has previously been careful to outline the limits of US and Nato's involvement. But as the conflict has unfolded reassessments would have been made in Western European capitals about Russia's military capabilities and Ukraine's fight back.

The war may now have become more entrenched, rather than closer to a negotiated exit deal which would reduce the suffering of civilians.