Russia signals scaled-back goals in war

LONDON • Russia's defence ministry said yesterday that the first phase of its military operation in Ukraine was mostly complete and that it would focus on completely "liberating" eastern Ukraine's Donbass region.

The announcement appeared to indicate that Russia may be switching to more limited goals after running into fierce Ukrainian resistance in the first month of the war.

Russian news agencies quoted the defence ministry as saying that Russian-backed separatists now controlled 93 per cent of Ukraine's Luhansk region and 54 per cent of the Donetsk region - the two areas that jointly make up the Donbass.

The ministry said it did not rule out storming Ukrainian cities that had been blockaded and that Russia would react immediately to any attempt to close the airspace over Ukraine - something Kyiv has asked Nato to do, but the military alliance has resisted.

Russia's military had considered two options for its operation in Ukraine, one confined to the Donbass and the other on the whole territory of Ukraine, the defence ministry said.

The Russian army yesterday also updated its losses in Ukraine to 1,351 soldiers, while saying that it had evacuated more than 400,000 civilians and condemning Western supplies of weapons to Kyiv.

At a Moscow briefing, senior military officials gave the first update on Russian deaths in weeks, adding that 3,825 soldiers had been wounded.

A senior representative of the General Staff, Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi, said that Russia was carrying out an operation "on the whole territory of Ukraine".

He claimed that Ukraine had lost 14,000 troops while 16,000 were wounded.

The most recent figure for Ukraine's military losses came from President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 12, when he said that about 1,300 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed in action.

Ukrainian troops are, meanwhile, recapturing towns east of Kyiv and Russian forces who had been trying to seize the capital are falling back on overextended supply lines, Britain said yesterday.

A month into their assault, Russian troops have failed to capture any major Ukrainian city.

Battle lines near Kyiv have been frozen for weeks with two main Russian armoured columns menacing the capital from the north-west and the east.

"Ukrainian counter-attacks, and Russian forces falling back on overextended supply lines, have allowed Ukraine to reoccupy towns and defensive positions up to 35 km east of Kyiv," the British intelligence update said yesterday.

Mr Volodymyr Borysenko, mayor of Boryspol, an eastern suburb where Kyiv's main airport is located, said Ukrainian forces had recaptured a village from Russian troops the previous day between Boryspol and Brovary, and would have pushed on further but had stopped to avoid putting civilians in danger.

On the other main front outside Kyiv, to the capital's north-west, Ukrainian forces have been trying to encircle Russian troops in the adjacent suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, reduced to ruins by heavy fighting over the past few weeks.

The United Nations said it was looking into reports of mass graves inside the port city of Mariupol, including one where at least 200 people were buried.

In Kharkiv in the east, officials said six people had been killed by the shelling of an aid distribution site at a supermarket.

A senior US administration official said Washington and its allies were working on providing anti-ship weapons to protect Ukraine's coast.

American officials told Reuters that Russia is suffering failure rates as high as 60 per cent for some of its precision-guided missiles.

With stocks of precision-guided munitions running low, Russian forces were more likely to rely on unguided bombs and artillery, Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Colin Kahl said.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE