On Friday, Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, said that Russia now wants full control of Donbas and southern Ukraine during the second phase of its “special military operation”.
The statement from Minnekayev is one of the most detailed about Moscow’s latest ambitions in Ukraine and suggests Russia does not plan to wind down its offensive there anytime soon.
The strategic importance of Donbas
The deputy commander, quoted by Russia’s TASS News Agency, said that Russian forces’ control over Donbas will “enable to establish a ground corridor to Crimea and to gain influence over vitally-important Ukrainian military facilities, the Black Sea ports”. Russian troops had seized control of Crimea in 2014.
Minnekayev said that by doing this, it would give Moscow access to the Russian-speaking breakaway region of Transnistria in Moldova.
“Control over the south of Ukraine is another way out to Transnistria, where there are also facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population,” Gen Minnekayev was quoted as saying.
Transnistria, which borders Ukraine from the west, claimed independence after the fall of the Soviet Union, but it is yet to be recognised internationally and officially remains part of Moldova.
The Moldovan government has long been nervous about Transnistria, a thin sliver of territory that is controlled by at least 12,000 separatists and Russian troops.
Since the war erupted, the Moldovan and Ukrainian militaries have faced the extra concern of whether the Transnistrians were going to jump into the battle and start attacking Ukraine from the west. So far, that has not happened.
Moreover, Russian occupation of Transnistria would cut off Ukraine’s entire coastline and mean Putin’s forces pushing hundreds of miles further west, past the major coastal city of Odesa.
Meanwhile, Russia has now shifted a dozen crack military units from the shattered port of Mariupol to eastern Ukraine and pounded away at cities across the region.
Numerous cities and villages came under bombardment in the Donbas — the industrial region in the east that the Kremlin has declared the new, main theater of war — as well as in the Kharkiv region just to the west, and in the south, Ukrainian authorities said.
What else Donbas means for Russia
Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – collectively known as the Donbas – broke away from Ukrainian government control in 2014 and proclaimed themselves independent “people’s republics,” until now unrecognised.
Like the Crimean peninsula, Luhansk and Donetsk are regions where a particularly large proportion of the population speaks Russian and is ethnically Russian.
After the Orange Revolution of 2004, and the Maidan protests of 2013 and 2014, it was in these parts of Ukraine where the opposition to Ukraine turning more towards the West was strongest, reported Deutsche Welle.
Russia’s influence looms large, particularly in the urban, industrial east where Russian is the predominant language in many districts along the Ukrainian border as well as in Crimea in the south.
Thus, if Russia succeeds in conquering both the regions, it would give Putin some sort of achievement from the weeks-long war.
According to a BBC report, the next step for Russia would be to annexe Donbas, just like it did with Crimea in 2014.
‘Russia is eyeing other countries after Ukraine’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Russia’s invasion of his country was just the beginning and that Moscow has designs on capturing other countries.
His comments after the Russian general said it wants full control over southern Ukraine.
“All the nations that, like us, believe in the victory of life over death must fight with us. They must help us, because we are the first in line. And who will come next?” Zelenskyy said in a video address late on Friday.
Moldova’s foreign ministry said it had summoned Moscow’s ambassador on Friday to express “deep concern” about the general’s comments. Moldova was neutral, it said. Moldova last month applied to join the European Union, charting a pro-Western course hastened by Russia’s invasion.
(With inputs from agencies)