Welcome to the inquiry with me, Tanya Beckett, one question, four expert witnesses, and an answer.

It's a year since Moscow launched its full-blown invasion of Ukraine.

In the course of the last 12 months, some 200,000 Russian soldiers have perished,

and last autumn Russian forces lost key towns and large swathes of land to the Ukrainian army,

as it mounted a series of counter-attacks. Arguably, President Putin is no closer to

controlling the country than he was at the start of the campaign when he launched a failed

assault on the capital Kiev in February of last year. But now as spring approaches,

Russia's army has been bolstered by hundreds of thousands of new conscripts.

An intelligence report suggests that Moscow is positioning its fighter jets,

a massing artillery and training and gathering troops in preparation for a renewed land offensive.

So this week on the inquiry, we're asking, what is Putin's plan now for Ukraine?

Throughout this winter, the fighting in Ukraine has been concentrated in the Donbass region.

A vast swath of Ukrainian land larger than the size of Switzerland, which borders Russia to the east.

The Donbass was invaded by Russia way before the current conflict back in 2014,

when it also annexed the Crimean peninsula to the south. In September of last year,

Putin announced the annexation of not just the Donbass region, but also the two neighbouring

regions of Zaparija and Persia in Ukraine's south.

I want the Kiev authorities and their real masters in the west to hear me,

so that they remember this forever. People in New Huntsk and Donetsk,

her son and Zaparija, are becoming our citizens forever.

Putin's forces did not in fact have complete control of any of the regions it had claimed.

In the months that followed Moscow reigned down missiles on the three quarters of the country

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