The Trump-Putin call and the geopolitical chessboard
When Russia announced, in its official statement, that it would launch an "operation" against Ukraine, everyone thought Ukraine would be an easy target and that the "operation" would not last long, concluding within a week at most. After all, hadn’t Russia seized Crimea in a similar manner, through a lightning operation, not too long ago? Putin framed the goals of the operation as follows: liberating the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, where the Russian minority lives; cleansing Ukraine of neo-Nazi