A Russian defense official reaffirmed that the goal of the Russian military operation in Ukraine is to control the land corridor connecting Donbass and Crimea.
Both areas are de facto controlled by separatists or Russia.
“This [control over Donbass] will enable us to establish a ground corridor to Crimea and to gain influence over the vitally-important Ukrainian [military] facilities, the Black Sea ports, which service deliveries of the agricultural and metallurgical products to other countries,” Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, reportedly said at a meeting in the Sverdlovsk region.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Minnekayev’s remarks on the goal of Russia’s military goal in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Defense Ministry denounced Russia’s goal as “imperialism.”
“They stopped hiding it. Today, the command of Russian looters, rapists, and murderers acknowledged that 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,” the ministry wrote in a social media post.
The Russian general’s comments came after Moscow claimed that Mariupol, a key Ukrainian city connecting Crimea and Donbass, has been taken by the Russian armed forces.
“The city has been taken definitively and completely. ... The strategically important administration building of the Azovstal plant has been taken under control, and all adjacent territory has been cleared,” Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic said in his telegram channel.
Some so-called Ukrainian nationalists are still blocked “under a thick layer of concrete and steel inside the plant,” he added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, which the Kremlin calls “a special military operation.”
The United Nations said that as of April 21, 2,345 civilians had been killed and 5,264 injured in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, and more than 5.1 million people had fled the country.
Russian forces recently shifted focus to the south and east of Ukraine where the separatist or disputed territories are located. The Kremlin is apparently intending to occupy the corridor connecting Crimea and Donbass, with Mariupol being a key city along the corridor.
Minnekayev’s comments reaffirmed Putin’s statement in early April.
Putin said that Russia is demanding Ukraine recognize Crimea as Russian and the so-called Donbass republics as independent. He emphasized that these two points are the key topics that the two sides have made no progress on, Russian state media RT reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged in early April that the intention of Russia’s military operation is to occupy the corridor connecting Crimea and Donbass including Mariupol.
“Donbass, and the south of Ukraine, and the corridor to Crimea, and the Kherson region, and the Zaporizhzhia region,” he said. “We basically understand what they are doing.”
The two sides have been at an impasse in the ceasefire talks for weeks as Ukraine refused to accept the proposal by Kremlin.
Peskov said on Wednesday that they have sent Ukraine a draft ceasefire agreement.
However, the Kremlin didn’t receive any answers from Kyiv, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated on Friday.
