Putin says conflict will continue in Ukraine
VLADIMIR Putin has vowed that Russia’s bloody offensive in Ukraine will continue until its goals are fulfilled.
Russia’s president yesterday insisted the campaign was going as planned, despite a major withdrawal in the face of stiff Ukrainian opposition and significant losses.
Russian troops, thwarted in their push toward Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, are now focusing on the eastern Donbas region and on the southern city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian officials said they are investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It is not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials have warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, Russia’s ground advance stalled, its forces have lost potentially thousands of fighters and the military stands accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
On a visit to Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, on the 61st anniversary of the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space, President Putin insisted that his invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscowbacked rebels and to “ensure Russia’s own security”.
He said Russia “had no other choice” but to launch what he called a “special military operation”, and vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfilment of the tasks that have been set”.
For now, Mr Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, which has been torn by fighting between Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces since 2014, and where Russia has recognised separatists’ claims of independence.
Military strategists say Russian leaders appear to hope local support, logistics and terrain in the region favour Russia’s larger and betterarmed military, potentially allowing its troops to turn the tide.
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill claimed a drone had dropped a poisonous substance on the city. It indicated there were no serious injuries. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a farright militia now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified.
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said officials are investigating the claim, and it was possible that phosphorus munitions – which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons – had been used in Mariupol.
The city has been pummelled by Russian troops, with its mayor saying more than 10,000 civilians have died.
Mayor Vadym Boychenko claimed the total death toll in Mariupol alone could surpass 20,000, and gave fresh details of allegations by Ukrainian officials that Russian forces have brought mobile cremation equipment to dispose of the corpses.