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Russia claims the eastern Donetsk region and three other regions of Ukraine. (file)
Moscow:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that his main goal after 30 months of fighting in Ukraine was to capture the eastern Donbass region — and claimed that Ukraine’s Kursk retaliation had made it easier.
Putin was speaking a day after Russia launched a series of deadly attacks on Ukraine’s western Lviv region and a recent advance by Moscow’s forces in the Donbass.
Since the start of its offensive in February 2022, when it failed to capture the Ukrainian capital Kiev, Russia has adapted its goals to try to conquer eastern Ukraine instead.
While Ukraine’s surprise push into Russia’s Kursk region last month caught Russian forces off guard, Putin insisted the move had failed to slow Moscow’s advance into occupied Ukraine.
“The enemy’s goal (in Kursk) was to distract us, stir us up, divert troops and force us to stop our aggression in key areas, especially in Donbass, the liberation of which is our main goal,” Putin said. ” Forum at Vladivostok in the Russian Far East.
Russia claims the eastern Donetsk region and three other regions of Ukraine.
Moscow has made a strong advance this summer and its troops are now about a dozen kilometers from the city of Pokrosk, a key logistics hub in eastern Ukraine from which thousands have now fled.
By sending “sufficiently prepared units” to Kursk, Ukraine has accelerated Moscow’s advance in Donbas, Putin said.
“The enemy has weakened itself in key areas, our army has intensified its offensive operations,” he argued.
‘sacred duty’
Putin also claimed that Moscow’s military had begun to evict Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region, where Kiev’s forces have held towns and villages for nearly a month.
Putin said that our armed forces have stabilized the situation and gradually started to drive (the enemy) out of our territory.
It was not possible to verify these claims.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted on Thursday that Ukraine was “maintaining the defined lines” in the Kursk region.
Russia did not react on a large scale in the first days of the incursion, which was the largest attack on Russian soil since World War II.
Putin has since played down the significance of the Ukraine attack but has toughened his rhetoric in recent days.
“It is the sacred duty of the Russian army to do everything possible to expel the enemy from this area and protect its citizens,” he said on Thursday.
Earlier this week, Zelenskiy told American TV channel NBC that Ukraine would retain the territory it seized in the Kursk region.
Zelensky previously said that one of Kiev’s “goals” in Kursk was to show the Russians “what is more important to them: the occupation of Ukraine’s territories or the protection of its population”.
Kiev has also said he wants to force Moscow into “fair” negotiations.
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While Russian officials have rushed to say in recent weeks that the Kursk incursion makes any talks with Ukraine impossible, Putin has appeared to walk back those statements.
He said Russia was ready to talk, but on the basis of an abortive deal to be reached in Istanbul in 2022, the details of which have never been made public by either side.
But Putin has repeatedly said that Moscow can negotiate with Ukraine only if Kiev surrenders four of its regions – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused to do so,” Putin said on Thursday.
“But not on the basis of some temporary demands, but on the basis of the documents that were agreed and initialed in Istanbul,” he added.
The Kremlin has claimed that Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of a deal in the spring of 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its offensive in Ukraine.
On Thursday, both sides reported fresh casualties near the front lines.
In Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a 74-year-old man was killed when a Russian shell hit his home in Kostiantynivka, the regional prosecutor’s office said, posting a photo of the damaged building.
Ukrainian shelling killed one person in Russia’s Belgorod border region, the region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram.
(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
