21 July 2022
Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said his country’s military goals in Ukraine go beyond the eastern Donbas region, according to state media, as Russian forces shelled southern and eastern Ukraine.
In an interview published by the state news agency RIA Novosti on Wednesday, Lavrov said that when Russia and Ukraine discussed a possible deal to end the hostilities, “our readiness to accept the Ukrainian proposal was based on the geography of March 2022″.
“The geography is different now. It is not only about the DNR and LNR,” Lavrov added, referring to the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), Russian-backed entities in Ukraine’s east.
“But also the Kherson region, the Zaporizhia region and a number of other territories,” he said. “This process is continuing, consistently and persistently.”
Lavrov is the most senior figure to speak openly of Russia’s war goals in territorial terms, nearly five months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion on February 24 with the stated goal of “demilitarising and denazifying” the country.
Source: AlJazeera
