Russian President Vladimir Putin stated Thursday that his major purpose in Ukraine, after 30 months of combating, was to safe the japanese Donbass area.
He added that Ukraine’s Kursk counteroffensive had made that goal simpler.
Putin was talking a day after Russia attacked Ukraine’s western Lviv area with lethal strikes and after current advances by Moscow’s forces within the Donbass.
Since the beginning of its offensive in February 2022 when it didn’t seize the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Russia has tailored its goals, concentrating as an alternative on making an attempt to overcome japanese Ukraine.
While Ukraine’s shock push into Russia’s Kursk area final month caught Russian forces off-guard, Putin burdened that the transfer had didn’t gradual Moscow’s advance in occupied Ukraine.
“The aim of the enemy (in Kursk) was to force us to worry, hustle, divert troops and to stop our offensive in key areas, especially in the Donbass, the liberation of which is our main primary objective,” Putin stated at a discussion board in Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east.
Russia claims the japanese Donetsk area and three different Ukrainian areas, as its personal.
Moscow has this summer time superior strongly and its troops at the moment are round a dozen kilometers from the town of Pokrovsk – a key logistics hub in east Ukraine from the place hundreds have now fled.
Putin stated Ukraine had despatched “quite well-prepared units” into Kursk and so had made Moscow’s advance in Donbass faster.
“The enemy weakened itself in key areas, our army has accelerated its offensive operations,” he argued.
‘Holy obligation’
Putin additionally claimed that Moscow’s military has begun to push out Ukrainian forces from the Kursk area, the place Kyiv’s forces have held on to cities and villages for nearly a month.
“Our armed forces have stabilized the situation and started gradually squeezing (the enemy) out from our territory,” Putin stated.
It was not doable to confirm these claims.
Russia didn’t mount a large-scale response within the first days of the incursion, which turned the most important on Russian soil since WWII. He has since performed down the importance of the Ukrainian assault.
But Putin hardened his rhetoric in current days.
“It is the holy duty of the Russian army to do everything to throw out the enemy from this territory and to protect our citizens,” he stated Thursday.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky advised US TV channel NBC that Ukraine would maintain on to the territory captured within the Kursk area.
Zelensky has beforehand stated that certainly one of Kyiv’s “goals” in Kursk was to indicate Russians “what is more important to him (Putin): occupation of the territories of Ukraine or the protection of his population”.
Kyiv has additionally stated that it desires to pressure Moscow into “fair” negotiations.
Aborted deal
While Russian officers have rushed in current weeks to say that the Kursk incursion makes any talks with Ukraine inconceivable, Putin appeared to roll again these statements.
Russia was prepared to speak, he stated — however on the idea of an aborted deal reached in Istanbul in 2022, the small print of which have been by no means made public by both facet.
But Putin has repeatedly stated that Moscow can solely negotiate with Ukraine if Kyiv surrenders 4 of its areas — Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused to do so,” Putin stated on Thursday.
“But not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, but on the basis of those documents that were agreed and actually initialed in Istanbul,” he added.
The Kremlin has claimed Russia and Ukraine have been on the verge of a deal within the spring of 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its offensive in Ukraine.
Source: www.dailysabah.com