Yuri Lapaiev
On April 22, General Rustam Minnekayev, the acting commander of the Central Military District, announced that one of the goals of the second phase of Russia’s “special military operation in Ukraine” is to gain full control of Donbas and Ukraine’s south. According to him, achieving this objective would “ensure a land corridor to Crimea, control over vital objects of Ukraine’s economy,” and grant Russia access to Transnistria, the separatist region of Moldova occupied by Russian “peacekeeping” forces since 1992 (Interfax, April 22; see EDM, April 28).
The pronouncement by Minnekayev seemed to signal yet another shift in Russian rhetoric regarding the goals of President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, which, after giving up on capturing Kyiv, had ostensibly refocused on taking Donbas. At the same time, the Russian general’s public revelation, whether officially sanctioned or not, seems logical because Russian forces already occupy large parts of southern Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, including important cities like Kherson (the only provincial center taken by Russians during the first phase of the current war), Nova Kahovka (the location of the North-Crimean Canal pump station and dam), and Berdyansk (one of the key ports on the Azov Sea and a place where the Ukrainian Navy had planned to build a new base).
No comments:
Post a Comment