Putin vows to fight on "until SMO goals are achieved", but what are they?

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on June 28 that Russian forces will continue fighting in Ukraine until the goals of the "special military operation" are met. Over more than four years of war, however, the Kremlin's stated objectives have shifted repeatedly, from "denazification" and "demilitarisation" to protecting Donbas residents and even "uniting the Russian people", and Russian officials have largely stopped trying to define them at all.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on June 28, 2026 that his forces would press on with the war in Ukraine. «Our troops will do everything to achieve the goals of the special military operation,» he said, offering no further clarification. It is a formula that has become familiar, and its deliberate vagueness is now itself a story.

A shifting list of justifications

When Russian forces crossed into Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin offered a concrete-sounding rationale: "denazification" and "demilitarisation" of Ukraine, protection of the people of the Donbas from what Moscow called genocide, and ensuring Ukraine's neutral status. Putin declared at the outset that the goal was to defend people who had been subjected to «mockery and genocide by the Kyiv regime» for eight years, and that Russia sought to bring those responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» to justice.

Within weeks, other objectives were added or substituted. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, identified one key aim as restoring the statehood of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics «within the 2014 borders fixed in their constitutions.» Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that regime change in Kyiv was not the goal, «that is an American speciality», but emphasised that Russia needed to ensure the east of Ukraine was free from militarisation and posed no security threat to Russia.

"The objectives don't change", until they did

As the war ground on, the list continued to evolve. Putin at various points described the operation as an attempt to end «the war in Donbas that had been going on since 2014,» and on another occasion said the deeper purpose was «the unification of the Russian people», a markedly grander ambition than the initial framing. He also acknowledged, in a notable moment of candour, that goals «change in line with the current situation», before insisting in the same breath that «fundamentally, of course, we will not change them.»

By late 2024 and into 2025, the language had become almost entirely self-referential. Year-end addresses praised the army for holding «strategic initiative along the entire front line» and noted the capture of over 300 settlements, framed as proof of progress toward goals that were no longer named. Reuters reported, citing sources, that Putin privately believed the war's «main goals» had already been achieved, even as fighting continued at high intensity.

An undefined endpoint

Now, in mid-2026, the pattern continues. Putin's June 28 statement contained no list, no timeline, and no definition, only the assurance that troops would pursue «the goals of the SMO.» The phrase has become a closed loop: the war continues until the goals are met, and the goals are whatever the war is currently achieving.

This strategic ambiguity serves the Kremlin in multiple ways. It allows Moscow to declare victory incrementally, absorb setbacks without admitting failure, and resist external pressure for negotiations by keeping the finish line moveable. For Ukraine, its Western partners, and international observers, the absence of a defined endpoint makes any diplomatic resolution significantly harder to structure, because it is impossible to verify whether unnamed conditions have been satisfied.

Analysts note that the shift from specific stated objectives to the circular formula of «SMO goals» mirrors a broader pattern in Russian information policy: replacing concrete claims with language that cannot be falsified and need never be retracted.