A senior Russian military commander has said Russia aims to take over Ukraine’s entire Donbass region and take over territory connecting it to the annexed Crimean peninsula.
Russian troops began a “second phase” of the war “two days ago” and “one of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over Donbass and southern Ukraine,” Rustam Minekayev, acting commander of Russia’s Central Military District, was quoted as saying. told Interfax on Friday.
Minekayev added that controlling southern Ukraine would open “another way to Transnistria”, a separatist enclave in Moldova, where a small Russian contingent is based and where he says “there are cases of oppression of the Russian-speaking population.”
Comments appear to suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin has more ambitious targets for the latest offensive than previously outlined.
Russia has always claimed that its main goal was to “liberate” the Donbass region, Ukraine’s eastern border area, controlled mainly by Moscow-backed separatists. Russian troops launched a major offensive to seize the region this week after attempts to seize Kyiv and other central Ukrainian cities failed.
The takeover of southern Ukraine “will allow us to create a land corridor to Crimea and will affect vital parts of the Ukrainian economy,” Minekayev said.
The Moldovan government said in response to Minekayev that “such statements are not only unfounded, but also unacceptable, as they increase tensions and mistrust in society.”
Moldovan officials told the Financial Times earlier this month that they were becoming increasingly concerned about statements by both Ukrainian and Russian authorities about the potential for provocation organized in Transnistria that could involve the separatist region in the war.
There were no signs of Russian troops and pro-Kremlin proxy forces mobilizing, Moldovan authorities added.
Russia seized territory north of the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, in the early days of the war, but failed to make further gains or connect it to the wider front.
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The takeover of the port city of Mariupol, which Putin claims to have “liberated” on Thursday, although fighting continues there, would be a significant step in linking the Donbass region to Russian forces in the south, analysts say.
The two-month siege almost completely destroyed Mariupol, Ukraine’s main export hub and the last major city not yet under Russian control in the region.
It is estimated that about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters are being held at Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant, which Russia has been bombing heavily all this week after other Ukrainian forces rejected its capitulation demands.
On Friday morning, a senior Ukrainian official said Russia was refusing to allow civilians to evacuate safely from the steel plant.
About 1,000 civilians, including children, are at the plant, according to Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk.
“There is a corridor for the capitulation of the military,” Vereshchuk said in a telegram. “The Russians provided one, but we don’t need it because our military doesn’t want to give up.
“There is also a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from the combat zone. We need such a corridor from Azovstal for the evacuation of women, children and the elderly.
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