Russia-Ukraine conflict: Kyiv says Russia's goal is to grab land, crush Ukrainian military in new offensive

Russia launched a new offensive on Ukraine this week as it regrouped and began its attack from the country’s eastern territory. Ukraine’s defense ministry detailed the new goals of the Russian forces in their attack on the country.

Reuters reports Ukraine’s defense ministry laid out the goals by the Russian military in its new offensive on the country as the war moves into its second month. The ministry said Moscow’s new goal is to seize land, establish a link between its territories in the east and the annexed Crimea, and crush the armed forces of Ukraine.

“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,” said the ministry’s spokesperson Oleksandr Motuznyak during a briefing. Both Luhansk and Donetsk are occupied by pro-Russian separatists and were declared by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin as independent states, sparking the war.

“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,” said Motuznyak, who later described Russia’s tactics so far as following “the textbooks of the Soviet era.”

The latest comments come as Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that Moscow wants to take control of Mariupol and all the territory that the Ukrainian government forces still control over Luhansk and Donetsk to create land access to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

The West and many other nations have joined in sanctioning Russia over its unprovoked attack on Ukraine, targeting oligarchs and their family members who have benefitted from Putin’s regime. One particular Russian tycoon, Oleg Tinkov, who was among the Russian elite that was sanctioned, condemned Putin and said that 90 percent of the Russian people are against the war that Putin is waging.

Tinkov made the comments online Tuesday, describing the war in Ukraine as “s***” and calling on the Western leaders to help end the conflict.

“I don’t see a single beneficiary of this crazy war! Innocent people & soldiers are dying,” said Tinkov in a post he shared on Instagram.