[ZERO] Update(11:43ET): In what's looking like a hugely significant first sign that Russia could be pulling back on the scope of its Ukraine operations, Bloomberg reports Friday that the Kremlin may be limiting its key military objectives to taking full control over the Donbas region. This despite multiple parts of the county, including outside the capital of Kiev, still witnessing intense fighting and shelling.
The hugely important Friday Bloomberg report says that "After a month of fighting that’s yielded limited territorial gains, the Russian military said it’s focusing efforts on taking full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region, potentially a sign it’s backing away from hopes of taking larger swathes of the country."
The Russian military's first deputy chief of the General Staff Sergei Rudskoi said the following as quoted in Interfax: "Our forces will focus on the main thing - the complete liberation of Donbas."
Bloomberg writes further of the Russian commander's surprising words, "Rudskoi claimed Russian troops have surrounded several major cities but deliberately didn’t seek to take them, instead aiming to pin Ukrainian troops down. His comments were the most detailed official accounting of Russian military performance since the Feb. 24 invasion."
"We'll just leave the tip in"
|