KYIV (REUTERS) – The goal of Russia’s new army offensive in east Ukraine is to grab land, set up an overground hyperlink between territories within the east and Crimea, and crush Ukraine’s armed forces, Ukraine’s Defence Ministry mentioned on Tuesday (April 19).
Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuznyak mentioned Russian forces are attacking alongside all the entrance line in jap Ukraine, urgent their siege of Mariupol within the south and making an attempt to encircle cities within the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk.
“The goal is to defeat the Ukrainian forces, to establish control over the territory of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and establish a land corridor to Crimea,” Mr Motuznyak instructed a briefing.
Russian-backed separatists who rose up in 2014 have declared so-called folks’s republics in territory they management in elements of the Luhansk and Donetsk areas.
Ukrainian officers have repeatedly mentioned Moscow needs to seize Mariupol and all of the territory that Ukrainian authorities forces nonetheless maintain in Luhansk and Donetsk to create a land hyperlink with Crimea, which Russia seized and occupied in 2014.
“The main efforts are to break through the positions held by Ukrainian troops and they have not stopped trying to gain full control over Mariupol,” Mr Motuznyak mentioned.
Summing up Russia’s ways, he mentioned: “Usually, they are: powerful artillery preparation, an attempt to storm particular positions, attempts to stymie the actions of units of Ukraine’s armed forces, attempts to surround our units, and to capture settlements. Russia is mainly waging war according to the textbooks of the Soviet era.”
