Moscow has announced that the main objectives of what it calls "its special military operation” in Ukraine have been accomplished. It says it's now going to focus on gaining control of the southeastern region of Donbas. Our chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, is in Kyiv. She reports on the response to Moscow's announcement in the Ukrainian capital:
It’s always been known that the primary objective, as we heard from Moscow, today, is the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, and the land corridor connecting the Donbas to the Crimean peninsula, both areas that Russian forces went into, in 2014.
The Donbas contains two provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, that touch the Russian border and since 2014 have been controlled by Russian-backed rebels.
Some of the best Ukrainian fighting units are there, and the concern has been that Russia would try to cut them off either from resupplying them or allowing them to move to other fronts.”
Moscow today, said that this wasn’t their primary objective, but they didn’t rule it out.
And so while we see Russian forces consolidating their positions on the outskirts of Kyiv, digging in their artillery, it’s the Ukrainians who are going on the offensive, pushing them back in the east and attacking them in the north-west.
This is not a country that will be at rest as this invasion goes on.
