'Obsessed' Vladimir Putin Believes It's 'His Destiny' To Take Ukraine & 'Recreate' Russian Empire, U.S. Intelligence Official Reveals
Vladimir Putin is “obsessed” with returning Ukraine to his control because the Russian leader aspires to “recreate” the Russian Empire before he is ousted from power, RadarOnline.com has learned.
In a surprising development to come as the 70-year-old’s “special military operation” in Ukraine approaches one full year of devastating conflict, Putin’s true aspirations have been revealed.
That is the revelation shared by former Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday to discuss Putin and the Russian leader’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
"Putin believes it's his destiny to recreate the Russian Empire,” Gates told Meet the Press. "And as my old mentor, Zbig Brzezinski, used to say: 'Without Ukraine, there can be no Russian Empire.’”
Gates, who served with both the Air Force and the CIA before becoming the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011, also indicated Putin will “hang in there” until his aspiration of returning the neighboring nation to Russian control is achieved.
"So he is obsessed with retaking Ukraine, he will hang in there,” the 79-year-old continued. “I think that he does believe that time is on his side, that support in the U.S., support in Europe, and so on, will fray."
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"And he's doing what Russian armies have always done,” Gates added, “and that is sending large numbers of relatively poorly equipped, poorly trained conscripts to the frontlines, in the belief that mass will overcome."
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Putin has faced major scrutiny over the past few months over his military’s continual struggle to successfully take Ukraine even one year after first invading the nation.
Putin has also suffered criticism over the conditions his troops are forced to fight in, particularly concerning the weapons, equipment and basic needs they are being provided.
"These losses are unsustainable, Putin is throwing meat into the grinder and it's only getting worse,” former U.S. Army major and congressman Richard Ojeda tweeted on Saturday.
"Tanks are about to be injected into this war that are far more capable than that of Russia's,” he added. “Russia was a paper Tiger and Ukraine proved that!"
As RadarOnline.com reported, Ojeda’s remarks that Putin’s losses are “unsustainable” came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy echoed the same sentiment and accused the Russian leader of “throwing Russian troops into the meat grinder."
"They don’t care about that,” the Ukrainian leader charged on Thursday “We count their losses. 1,000s of soldiers – they just throw them into the meat grinder.”
"They don't care about it. I mean, they don't count their people. This is a fact,” Zelenskyy added. "We are counting their people. But we don't have exact numbers. There are much more casualties from their side.”