Moscow aims to capture southern and eastern Ukraine: Russian general

MARIUPOL • A Russian general declared yesterday 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.

Ukraine said the comments by Major-General Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia's central military district, had given the lie to Moscow's previous assertions that it has no territorial ambitions.

"They stopped hiding it," Ukraine's defence ministry said in a tweet. Russia has "acknowledged 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".

Maj-Gen Minnekayev was quoted by Russian state news agencies as saying Moscow aimed to seize the 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's general staff said Russian forces had increased attacks along the eastern front line and were trying to mount an offensive in the Kharkiv region, north of Russia's main target, the Donbas.

In Kharkiv, Russian shellfire hit the main Barabashovo market. Ambulance services said there had been casualties but gave no details. A wedding hall and a residential building were also struck.

In Geneva, the United Nations human rights office said there was growing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, including indiscriminate shelling and summary executions. It said Ukraine also appeared to have used weapons with indiscriminate effects.

Russia denies targeting civilians, and says, without evidence, that signs of atrocities committed by its soldiers were faked.

A day after Russia said it had won the war's biggest fight - the battle for Mariupol, the main port of the Donbas - after a nearly two-month siege, President Vladimir Putin yesterday accused Kyiv of refusing to allow Ukrainian troops to surrender in the blockaded city.

"All servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces, militants of the national battalions and foreign mercenaries who laid down their arms are guaranteed life, decent treatment in accordance with international law, and the provision of quality medical care," he told European Council president Charles Michel, the Kremlin said. "But the Kyiv regime is not allowing for this opportunity to be used."

Mr Putin said he had decided not to try to root out thousands of Ukrainian fighters still holed up in a the Azovstal steel plant 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 yesterday. "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."

Satellite imagery from near Mariupol shows a mass grave site has expanded in recent weeks to contain more than 200 new graves, Maxar Technologies said on Thursday.

The private US company said the site lies adjacent to an existing cemetery in the village of Manhush, 20km west of Mariupol.

Ukraine estimates tens of thousands of civilians have died in the city during Russia's bombardment. Kyiv says 100,000 civilians are still inside the city, and need full evacuation. It says Moscow's decision not to storm the Azovstal steel works is proof that Russia lacks the forces to defeat the Ukrainian defenders.

Abandoning the effort to defeat the last Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol frees up more Russian troops for the main military effort, an assault from several directions on the towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in the Donbas, to cut off the main Ukrainian military force in the east.

Maj-Gen Minnekayev described a much wider goal of linking up with Transdnistria, a Russian-occupied breakaway part of Moldova, which is on Ukraine's south-western border.

He said Russian speakers there were oppressed, the same justification Moscow has given for its interventions in Ukraine since 2014, which Western countries call a baseless pretext.

While Russia has withdrawn from northern Ukraine and so far made only limited headway in the east, it still occupies a swathe of southern Ukraine captured in the early days of the invasion. Ukrainian officials fear Moscow might try to organise fake independence votes to try to wrest those areas away.

REUTERS