Russia moving forces for big clash over heartland
Russia and Ukraine are hurtling towards what could be an epic battle for control of the besieged country’s industrial heartland, with Ukrainian officials reporting that Moscow has shifted a dozen crack military units from the shattered port of Mariupol to eastern Ukraine.
In Mariupol, reduced largely to smoking rubble by weeks of bombardment, Russian state TV showed the flag of the proMoscow Donetsk separatists raised on what it said was the city’s highest point, its TV tower. It also showed what it said was the main building at the city’s besieged Azovstal steel plant in flames.
The Kremlin had thrown over 100,000 troops and mercenaries from Syria and Libya into the fight in Ukraine, and was deploying more forces in the country every day, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council.
Numerous cities and villages had come under bombardment in the Donbas – the industrial region in eastern Ukraine that the Kremlin has declared the new, main theatre of war – as well as in the Kharkiv region just to the west, and in the south, authorities said.
Meanwhile, a senior Russian military official has publicly outlined Russian war aims that
appear to be wider than what the Kremlin has stated in recent weeks.
Rustam Minnekayev said Russian forces aimed to take full control of southern Ukraine, in addition to eastern Ukraine, and that doing so would open the way to the nation of Moldova, where Russia backs the breakaway region of Transnistria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared victory in the battle for Mariupol. Danilov said 12 to 14 of Russia’s elite military units had left Mariupol and begun moving to the east, to take part in the fighting there.
The Russian campaign has yet to become a full-out assault, with military analysts saying Moscow’s forces are still ramping up
and have not achieved any major breakthroughs in the Donbas or gained any significant ground.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said talks between the two countries had ‘‘ground to a halt’’ because Moscow had not received a response from Kyiv to its latest proposals, the details of which have not been released.