Putin keeps saying Russia will fight until it achieves the ‘goals of the special military operation.’ But it’s not clear what those ‘goals’ even are.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on June 28 that he intends to continue military operations in Ukraine. “Our troops will do everything to achieve the goals of the special military operation,” he said.

What exactly those “goals” are remains unclear.

In the first two years of the full-scale war, the list changed constantly — from the “denazification” of Ukraine to “protecting the residents of Donbas” and even “uniting the Russian people” — and then Putin and other senior Russian officials gradually began simply invoking the phrase “goals of the SVO” without elaborating further.

Here are just some of those statements.