Russia’s objectives in Ukraine now extend beyond Donbas: Lavrov

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said Moscow's military "tasks" in Ukraine have now gone beyond the eastern region of Donbas due to constant supplies of Western equipment, weapons, and ammunition to Kiev.

In an interview with state news agency RIA Novosti, Lavrov said on Wednesday that supplies of Western weapons had changed the Kremlin's calculus.

If the West, out of "impotent rage" or desire to aggravate the situation further, kept pumping Ukraine with long-range weapons such as the US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), "that means the geographical tasks will extend still further from the current line", the foreign minister added.

The top Russian diplomat further said geographical realities had changed since Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held peace talks in late March.

Lavrov said the first rounds of talks with Ukraine proved that Kyiv had no "desire to discuss anything in earnest."

Talks between Russia and Ukraine largely ground to a halt in mid-April, Lavrov said.

At that time, he said, the focus was on the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR), breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.

"Now the geography is different, it's far from being just the DPR and LPR, it's also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number of other territories," he said, referring to territories well beyond the Donbas that Russian forces have wholly or partly seized.

"This process is continuing logically and persistently," he said, adding that Russia might need to push even deeper.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Lavrov stressed that Russia could not allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "or whoever replaces him" to threaten its territory or that of the DPR and LPR with the longer-range systems.

SS