Putin directed them to “increase their combat capabilities” and the Kremlin-backed separatist leaders in Luhansk and Donetsk respectively urged and promised further advances against Ukrainian government forces. After Russian troops completed their occupation of Luhansk this month, they immediately stepped up shelling of cities in Donetsk province. Still, Russia has advanced slowly and has signaled an intent to continue. In territory Russians already occupy, Ukraine is conducting resistance operations. In Luhansk Oblast (province), Ukraine made Russia pay mightily for every inch of territory, helping to buy time for critical western artillery to arrive. Kyiv’s forces have pushed Russian forces back from Kharkiv and are preparing counteroffensives in the south near Kherson. It remains uncertain whether or when Russia may reach its reduced target of taking the south and east. It also would win Russia a strategically useful overland transport route to the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula and would let Russia provide critical water supplies from the mainland to Crimea. This smaller advance would still give Putin a victory, fulfilling at least one of his initial declared aims, securing the Donbas region. The impression of a narrowed goal also appeared in the Russian military effort in April to achieve a more limited seizure of Ukraine’s four eastern and southern provinces: Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. On June 29 Putin declared that the “ultimate aim” of the Russian war in Ukraine is “the liberation of the Donbas, the defense of its people, and the creation of conditions which would guarantee the security of Russia itself.” This reflected a rhetorical step back from the goals he proclaimed in the first days of his renewed war: “unconditional consideration for Russia’s legitimate interests in the sphere of security, including recognition of Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, achieving the objectives of the Ukrainian state’s demilitarization and denazification, and ensuring its neutral status.” (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times) Putin’s Narrowed Battlefield Broad evidence shows Moscow has not narrowed its goals in Ukraine, a point vital to any notion for peace talks. Ukrainians fire at Russian forces in Donetsk province, a target of Russia’s current, narrowed offensive. This reality undermines well-meaning suggestions for peace negotiations that are based on beliefs the Kremlin will settle for what it has now. Putin’s goal is unchanged, and he is prepared to achieve it by degrees. Yet this is probably just a short-term change. This and other signals may suggest that President Vladimir Putin is limiting his war aims and will settle for consolidation of control over four provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine. Russia’s Ukraine war, launched in February along the 350 miles from Belarus to the Black Sea, has largely narrowed these weeks to a 45-mile-wide assault on cities in the Donbas region.
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