‘Russia aiming to capture southern, eastern Ukraine’
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment when asked if Russia had expanded the goals of its operation
KYIV/MARIUPOL: A Russian general said on Friday that Moscow wants to seize all of southern and eastern Ukraine, far wider war aims than it had acknowledged as it presses on with a new offensive after its campaign to capture the capital Kyiv collapsed last month.
Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, was quoted by Russian state news agencies as saying Moscow aimed to seize the entire eastern Donbas region, link up with the Crimea peninsula, and capture Ukraine’s entire south as far as a breakaway, Russian-occupied region of Moldova.
That would mean pushing hundreds of miles beyond current lines, past the major Ukrainian cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa.
Ukraine said his comments had given the lie to Russia’s previous assertions that it has no territorial ambitions.
“They stopped hiding it,” Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Twitter. Russia had “acknowledged that the goal of the ‘second phase’ of the war is not victory over the mythical Nazis, but simply the occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine. Imperialism as it is.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment when asked if Russia had expanded the goals of its operation and how Moscow saw the political future of southern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces had increased attacks along the whole frontline in the east and were trying to mount an offensive in the Kharkiv region, north of Russia’s main target, the Donbas.
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Collecting bodies from destroyed Mariupol
Russia said on Thursday it had won the war’s biggest fight - the battle for the main port of the Donbas, Mariupol - after a nearly two-month siege. President Vladimir Putin said he had decided not to try to root out thousands of Ukrainian troops still holed up in a huge steel works there, but to barricade them inside instead.
Washington dismissed the announcement.
“Actions, not words. I think we have to watch and see what the Russians actually do here,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told CNN. “We still assess that Mariupol is contested, that it hasn’t been taken by the Russians and that there’s still an active Ukrainian resistance.”
In a Russian-held section of the city, the guns had largely fallen silent and dazed looking residents ventured out on streets on Thursday to a background of charred apartment blocks and wrecked cars.
Volunteers in white hazmat suits and masks roved the ruins, collecting bodies from inside apartments and loading them on to a truck marked with the letter “Z”, symbol of Russia’s invasion.
Maxar, a commercial satellite company, said images from space showed freshly dug mass graves on the city’s outskirts. Ukraine estimates tens of thousands of civilians have died in the city during Russia’s bombardment and siege. Kyiv says 100,000 civilians are still inside the city, and need full evacuation. The United Nations and Red Cross say the civilian toll is still unknowable but at least in the thousands.