প্রকাশ: 21/07/2022
Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow's military
"tasks" in Ukraine now went beyond the eastern Donbas region, in the
clearest acknowledgment yet that it has expanded its war goals.
In an interview with state media nearly five months after
Russia's invasion, the foreign minister also said peace talks made no sense at
the moment because Western governments were leaning on Ukraine to fight rather
than negotiate.
Ukraine's foreign minister retorted that Russia wanted
"blood, not talks".
When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, President Vladimir
Putin explicitly denied any intention of occupying his neighbour. He said then
that his aim was to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine - a statement
dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a pretext for an imperial-style war of
expansion.
But Lavrov said geographical realities had changed since
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held peace talks in Turkey in late March that
failed to produce any breakthrough.
Advertisement · Scroll to continue
At that time, he said, the focus was on the Donetsk and
Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR), self-styled breakaway entities in
eastern Ukraine from which Russia has said it aims to drive out Ukrainian
government forces.
"Now the geography is different, it's far from being
just the DPR and LPR, it's also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number
of other territories," he said, referring to areas well beyond the Donbas
that Russia has wholly or partly seized.
"This process is continuing logically and persistently."
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded: "By
confessing dreams to grab more Ukrainian land, (the) Russian foreign minister
proves that Russia rejects diplomacy and focuses on war and terror. Russians
want blood, not talks."
Lavrov said Russia might need to push even deeper if the
West, out of "impotent rage" or desire to aggravate the situation
further, kept pumping Ukraine with long-range weapons such as the US-made High
Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).
"That means the geographical tasks will extend still
further from the current line," he said.
Russia could not allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy "or whoever replaces him" to threaten its territory or that
of the DPR and LPR with the longer-range systems, he said - referring casually,
and without any evidence, to the possibility that the Ukrainian leader might
not remain in power.
After failing to take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv at the
start of the war, Russia said in March it would focus on "achieving the
main goal, the liberation of Donbas".
Nearly four months later, it has taken Luhansk, one of two
provinces that comprise the Donbas, but remains far from capturing all of the
other, Donetsk. In the past few weeks it has ramped up missile strikes on
cities across Ukraine.
Lavrov spoke a day after the White House said Russia was
starting to roll out a plan to annex large parts of southern Ukraine under the
cover of "sham referendums".
Russian-imposed officials in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia have
outlined plans to hold plebiscites in the coming months. The Kremlin says it is
up to people living there to decide their own futures.
- Reuters
প্রধান সম্পাদকঃ সৈয়দ বোরহান কবীর
ক্রিয়েটিভ মিডিয়া লিমিটেডের অঙ্গ প্রতিষ্ঠান
বার্তা এবং বাণিজ্যিক কার্যালয়ঃ ২/৩ , ব্লক - ডি , লালমাটিয়া , ঢাকা -১২০৭
নিবন্ধিত ঠিকানাঃ বাড়ি# ৪৩ (লেভেল-৫) , রোড#১৬ নতুন (পুরাতন ২৭) , ধানমন্ডি , ঢাকা- ১২০৯
ফোনঃ +৮৮-০২৯১২৩৬৭৭