Russia not only plans to take control of the Donbas region, but aims to occupy the whole of southern Ukraine to the border with Moldova in the west.
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This was stated by the Deputy Commander of Russia’s Central Military District, Major General Rustam Minnekaev on Friday, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
“Russia plans to take full control of the Donbas and southern Ukraine as part of the second phase of the military operation,” the deputy commander told Reuters.
He says control of southern Ukraine will give Russia a gateway to the breakaway region of Transnistria in Moldova, a strip of land where many ethnic Russians live.
The second phase of the war began on April 19, when the capital Kyiv was abandoned and the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine became the target of warfare by Russian forces.
At the annual meeting of the arms industry in Sverdlovsk on Friday, Major General Minnekaev pointed out that control of the Donbas will make it possible to form a land corridor to the Crimea.
The Crimean peninsula in Ukraine has been occupied by Russia since 2014.
“Control over southern Ukraine is another way to Transnistria, where there are also facts about the oppression of the Russian-speaking population,” Minekaev said.
Transnistria has declared itself an independent republic, but is not recognized by the UN. The pro-Russian territory lies like a belt between Moldova and Ukraine.
Suppression of the Russian-speaking population of the pro-Russian breakaway republics of the Donbas was one of Vladimir Putin’s reasons for invading Ukraine on 24 February.
Minneakev stated on Friday that Russia is apparently at war with the whole world.
– That was how it was in the great patriotic war, everything in Europe was the whole world against us. And now the same thing, they never liked Russia, Minneakev said.
The Great Patriotic War is World War II.
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