Putin's Plan For Ukraine, In One Sentence

REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting with high-ranked officials representing Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and the European Union in Minsk, August 26, 2014.

"The Putin goal is federalization in some way creating an autonomous region inside Ukraine that would influence the whole of Ukraine, in a political way, military way, economic way, binding it with Russia and preventing the whole of Ukraine from going very rapidly to the West without consulting with the Kremlin and with Putin," Alexander Baunov, a Russian writer and political commentator, told The New York Times.

A tenuous ceasefire between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists is holding for now, but the prospect of a political deal to end the crisis is still far away.

With Ukrainian parliamentary elections seven weeks away and tensions simmering, there is little chance that Kiev will make concessions that Vladimir Putin demands before fighting breaks out again.

Yuri V. Lutsenko, an influential adviser to Ukraine President Petro O. Poroshenko who is leading his party in elections, wrote on Sunday that the idea of creating a special autonomous region in the east would be "a cancerous tumor in the Ukrainian organism."

He added that "when our living standard will be attractive even for Kremlin-poisoned Donbass citizens, we will open the doors to all who recognize the integral, unitary European Ukraine."

However, Putin has a lot of things going for him in the medium-to-long term, including Ukraine's imploding economy, the threat of a further Russian invasion, the hesitance of Europe, the face that winter is coming, the state of Ukraine's battered army and militias.

Putin's aim in Ukraine may involve creating a frozen conflict with a breakaway region in Ukraine's southeast corner, or he could push toward creating a land bridge with Crimea (which was annexed in March). The latter option would intensify the war significantly.

In any case, all signs point to a lengthy struggle between Russia and the West as Putin imposes his will.