(CNN) — Russia revealed that the goal of its invasion of Ukraine is to take “full control” of the Donbas region and also of southern Ukraine.
The announcement of a high military position is the first time that Russia admits that it is struggling to establish a land runner through the Ukrainian territory that connects Russia with Crimea, the peninsula that was annexed in 2014.
“Since the start of the second phase of the special operation, which started literally two days ago, one of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over Donbas and southern Ukraine. This will provide a land corridor to Crimea,” he said. Major General Rustam Minnekaev, acting commander of Russia’s Central Military District, according to TASS, a Russian state news agency.
A barricade in Odessa, in southern Ukraine.
Minnekaev, speaking at the annual general meeting of the Union of Defense Industry Enterprises of the Sverdlovsk region, was quoted by TASS as saying that the goal was to create a land corridor between Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and Crimea.
He added that control of southern Ukraine would give Russian forces access to Transnistria, a breakaway region in Moldova, where a contingent of Russian forces has been stationed since the early 1990s.
Russian forces currently have only partial control of southern Ukraine, with the Ukrainian government still holding the key cities of Mykolaiv and Odessa and some Ukrainian forces holding out at a steel plant in the fenced-off port of Mariupol.
In recent weeks, Russia withdrew its forces from northern Ukraine after failing to take Kyiv, and the Russian military said its strategic goals had changed to taking over the entire eastern Donbas region.
Asked by journalists on Friday to detail which territories southern Ukraine was referring to, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment, referring questions to the Defense Ministry.
The Ukrainian authorities warned in recent days that the Russian forces occupying the city of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, were planning to organize a fake referendum in the coming days in which the so-called “People’s Republic of Kherson” would be declared, which it would mirror the Russian-backed creation of breakaway republics in Donbas in 2014, which laid the groundwork for Russia’s February 24 invasion.