Military expert Dmytro Sniehyriov stated this on Espreso TV."The main factor driving the Russian dictator's strong desire to seize the entire Donetsk region is not military, but economic. The point is that if the Ukrainian Armed Forces withdraw from the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the largest industrial cities of the Donetsk region—Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Druzhkivka, and Kostiantynivka—will be under Russian control. We should also not forget about the largest shale gas deposits in Europe. Consequently, given that the U.S. and Ukraine have signed an agreement on the joint use of Ukrainian subsoil resources, Kyiv, by implementing this agreement and controlling these fields, would finally have the opportunity to achieve energy independence. And that is a catastrophe for the Russian Federation. They would lose not so much a military lever of pressure on Ukraine, but an economic one," Sniehyriov explained.The expert also believes that the Kremlin's political goal in capturing the entire Donetsk region is to show at least some intermediate results of the so-called 'special military operation.'"From a military point of view, Putin understands perfectly well that it is practically impossible to take the four industrial cities of the Donetsk region, which form an agglomeration, in the foreseeable future. In Bakhmut alone, which is not a large city compared to Kostiantynivka, the Russians suffered 90,000 casualties. Moreover, they stormed Bakhmut for 9 months. Here, we are talking about capturing four industrial cities. The political part is that Putin needs to show at least some intermediate and positive results for Russia from the so-called 'special military operation'," he added.On November 27, following the CSTO summit in Kyrgyzstan, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin held a press conference where he commented on the peace plan and the war in Ukraine.