Kyiv: Russia signaled it may dial back its war aims to focus on eastern Ukraine after failing to break the nation’s resistance in a month of fighting and attacks on civilians, including up to 300 feared killed in the bombing of a theatre.
The possible shift came as President Joe Biden visited elite US troops serving with NATO just across the border in Poland and France s Emmanuel Macron proposed an internationally backed evacuation of civilians trapped in the bombarded city of Mariupol.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the February invasion to destroy Ukraine s military and topple pro-Western President Volodymyr Zelensky, bringing the country under Russia s sway.
However, Sergei Rudskoi, a senior general, suggested a considerably reduced “main goal” of controlling Donbass, an eastern region already partly held by Russian proxies.
His surprise statement came as a Western official reported that a seventh Russian general, Lieutenant General Yakov Rezanstev, had died in Ukraine and that a colonel had been “deliberately” killed by his own demoralized men.
Complicating Moscow s challenges, invasion troops were facing a counteroffensive in Kherson, the only major Ukrainian city under Russian control.
Visiting Rzeszow, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Ukraine, Biden praised Ukraine s “incredible” resistance, comparing the conflict to a bigger version of communist China s 1989 crushing of protests in Tiananmen Square.
Biden told soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division that the struggle in eastern Europe represents a historic “inflection point”.
“Are democracies going to prevail… or are autocracies going to prevail? And that s really what s at stake,” Biden said.
The US leader was briefed on the humanitarian situation, with more than 3.7 million refugees fleeing Ukraine, most of them into Poland.
Earlier, he ended a trip to Brussels for meetings with Western allies by announcing new measures to help the European Union shed dependence on imported Russian energy.
The plan is part of a sea change in the West, which for years has shrunk from direct confrontation with the Kremlin, but now seeks to make Putin a pariah. AFP
