"Our citizens forever," is how Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed in his speech after signing the annexation documents at the St. George’s Hall of the Kremlin on Friday evening. These three words depict the whole story.

With this annexation ceremony, as per the official Russian version, which denotes the inclusion of four occupied regions Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia into the folds of the Russian Federation, Putin has completed the first phase of his Ukraine agenda, while the West believes that "he is doing all this in desperation to project himself as still a well-entrenched leader to cover-up his misadventure in Ukraine."

In the last week of February, when the Russian tanks rolled into the Ukrainian territory, most of the Western capitals – including Washington – were not expecting a prolonged war because of three main assumptions: First, operational deficiencies and logistical weaknesses of the Russian army were considered to be too crumbly to sustain a long war. Secondly, Putin’s mercurial and impatient nature would compel him to keep his "special military operation" short and brief, and third, the stringent economic sanctions would not allow the feeble Russian economy to withstand this conflict beyond a few weeks.

However, all these calculations have so far proven to be completely erroneous. Yes, the recent Kharkiv episode, where the Ukrainian army was able to cause a big dent to Russian troops by recapturing a sizable chunk of lost territory, but such short-term gains and losses are part and parcel of every prolonged war. The Western leaders were overestimating Putin’s call for "mobilization," which was followed by the Kharkiv rout, as a sign of his weakness and they assumed that Putin was badly trapped in the Ukraine imbroglio and now he was trying to find ways for a face-saving equation.

The basic problem of the Western leaders from day one is their inability to ascertain the prime strategic objective of Putin’s Ukraine doctrine. The only reason behind the Russian assault on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in the early stage of the war was to push the panic button in the Western capitals. By attacking Kyiv, Putin sent shockwaves across the European continent. He simply took psychological advantage by catapulting the European Union and NATO – as well as the European public at large – into hysterical despondency when Russian jets started targeting Kyiv in the initial days of the war.

Tactical shift to east

Within a few weeks after its massive and blistering attack on Ukraine, Putin "abandoned" the plan to ensnare Kyiv and shifted focus from the Ukrainian capital to the Donbass, specifically the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. This tactical shift in the focus of the Russian military's operations was part of the preplanned strategy. So capturing Kyiv was never part of his basic plan.

Putin knew well that the invasion of Kyiv would create massive logistical problems for Russia. A destroyed capital, with completely collapsed infrastructure, would not be manageable by Russia at all. He simply wanted to engineer the geographical disintegration of Ukraine in such a way that facilitates his much-desired "thicker" buffer zone against NATO’s proposed expansion.

Though most Western military analysts are claiming that Putin faced setbacks in the early phase of the war and he pulled his troops out of Kyiv and diverted them to the eastern and southern fronts of the war, this analysis seems to be far from reality.

Clever strategist

Putin is a clever strategist. Putin is aware of the fact that the Russian army does not have sufficient logistical capabilities to first capture Kyiv – which is located deep inside Ukraine – and then sustain it for more than a few weeks. It would have been a major political disaster and sheer embarrassment for Putin to capture and then lose Kyiv to Ukrainian forces after a few days.

In the absence of any rail and road movements of troops and smooth supplies of materials (including ammunition, spare parts, fuel and other weaponry), Russia's ground forces would have been in an extremely vulnerable position in areas around Kyiv. There is no possibility for Russian forces to ensure a quick and safe supply chain of the required material to the forward-deployed units in Kyiv – a prerequisite for any invading army to ensure its control over occupied territory.

It was clear that Putin wanted to capture the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine to repeat the same old sham vote drama that played out in Crimea in 2014. He has integrated almost 18% of Ukrainian territory into the Russian Federation. He successfully achieved this objective by signing the annexation documents on Friday evening.

In fact, Putin would have waited a few more months to consolidate his grip on the occupied regions before announcing the formal annexation, but the Kharkiv failure and the subsequent Western propaganda about the Russian army as an "ill-disciplined and poorly equipped war machinery with low morale" pushed him to expedite the process of formal integration of these regions into the Russian Federation.

The haste with which Putin arranged the phony referendums at gunpoint on Russian-held Ukrainian territory is certainly the reflection of some sort of nervousness in the Putin camp as well. Putin’s announcement regarding "partial mobilization" was taken by the outside world as a symptom of the growing lethargy of the Russian army and it was considered to be a major positive twist in favor of the Ukrainian army. On the homefront, Putin desperately needed something tangible to muffle the growing discontentment and rising anti-war sentiments of the Russian public.

Annexation drama

The annexation drama, which was accompanied by all the pomp and circus – including a celebration concert – is a clever ploy by Putin to counter the political pressure from his critics inside Russia who are trying to mobilize anti-war themes against the "paralytic halt" in the Donbass.

Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, when Putin ordered the Russian troops to enter Ukrainian territory, he knows well that the Russian army would never comprehensively win this war, and eventually he will have to sit at the negotiating table to further maneuver the outcome as per his prime objectives. He has achieved his prime objective by annexing the four key areas that will create a buffer between Russia and NATO’s eastward extension.

Now, he will not go back from this area, that's for sure.

He deliberately used the words "our citizens forever" in his annexation speech to send a clear message to Kyiv and its Western backers that they forget about these territories, and that now Russia will only negotiate the timeline of a "cease-fire."

The Ukraine war has blatantly exposed the limitations of the much-hyped Russian military prowess and Putin does not want this myth to be further tested and eroded.

Putin is quite confident that, despite the obvious weaknesses of Russian military capabilities, Russia is in a position to maintain the status quo in the occupied regions for a very long time and he is waiting for the exhaustion in the Western camp, which is already feeling the pressure of the cost of living crisis.

Putin has no plans to further move inside Ukraine at all. He cannot. He is waiting for Türkiye, China, France and India to start playing the role of mediators to further "legalize" his annexation at the negotiating table.

That’s all that he wanted from day one. Putin has faced many setbacks in Ukraine in the last eight months, but he seems to be quite confident about a favorable equation at the end of this episode.

* Op-ed contributor based in Karachi, Pakistan