He says negotiations to achieve peace are “pointless” in the current situation
Despite the slow pace at which Russian troops are advancing into Donbas, the target declared by Moscow as the main target in its current military intervention on Ukrainian soil, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with several Russian officials this Wednesday. media announced that because of the long-range weapons assistance Ukraine is receiving from the West, “the geography of the special operation has changed. It is far from just the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics».
According to his statements, Russia is now also considering “keeping the Kherson, Zaporizhzhya and a host of other areas. This process continues and will continue steadily and persistently.” In his interview with the official RT television, the RIA-Novosti agency and other Russian media, Lavrov said that, according to the outcome of the peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, in March “there was a geography and now it is different”. Talks about a solution to the conflict broke down at the end of March and have not yet resumed. The last contact was in Istanbul.
So Russia demanded that Ukraine accept the final loss of Crimea and the two regions of Donbas, Donetsk and Luhansk, in order to stop the war. Now, judging by the words of the head of Russian diplomacy, if Kiev wants to end the conflict, it will also have to forget about Kherson and most of Zaporizhzhya, regions that the Russian army quickly captured in the early days. of the advancing war in Crimea.
Lavrov explained that such a paradigm shift, which he says could mean the loss of other parts of the country for Kiev, is due to “the military threats to Russia emanating from the territory of Ukraine”. He added that “geographical targets will be further expanded as Kiev receives weapons with increasing range.” The Russian minister warned that “we cannot allow that in the part of Ukraine controlled by Zelensky or the person who succeeds him, there are weapons that pose a direct threat to our territory or to the territory of those republics that have lost their independence.” have proclaimed and want to self-determination. ». According to him, it would make no sense to organize a new round of negotiations now. “It makes no sense in the current situation,” he said.
After the failed attempts to take Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, on March 25, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the withdrawal of its troops from the Kiev area to concentrate them in Donbas with the aim of completely destroying the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. and by placing them under the control of pro-Russian separatists. Then it was said that with that “the second phase of the operation” began.
With the capture of Lisichansk on July 3, the occupation of Lugansk was practically complete and now the Russian army is preparing to capture important cities in the Donetsk region, such as Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut. But in June, the United States began supplying Ukraine with multiple-launch HIMARS missile systems, with a range of 60 kilometers, which allowed the Ukrainian military to destroy Russian command posts and numerous ammunition and equipment depots.
Ukraine, according to the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council SNBO, Oleksiy Danilov, is now waiting for the arrival of HIMARS launchers with a longer range, up to 300 kilometers, which could launch an attack on Crimea, the base of the Black Sea Fleet. would make possible. and even the bridge that President Vladimir Putin had built to connect the peninsula with Russia’s Krasnodar region.
On July 7, the Russian leader assured that “we have not refused to hold peace talks, but those who refuse to do so should know that the longer it takes to undertake them, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us.” Referring to arms shipments to Ukraine from the United States and other NATO countries, the Kremlin chief warned that “they want to beat us on the battlefield, what can I say? Well, let them try” and threatened in connection with the ongoing campaign that “everyone should know that we generally haven’t started anything seriously yet”.
Source: La Verdad
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