Russian Major General Rustam Minnekayev says that the goal of the military operation is now to seize territory in Southern Ukraine in order to create a land corridor from Crimea to Ukraine’s border with Transnistria, a pro-Russian unrecognized breakaway state that is internationally recognized as part of Moldova.
Russian news agency TASS reports: “This [control over Donbass] will enable us to establish a ground corridor to Crimea and to gain influence over the vitally-important Ukrainian [military] facilities, the Black Sea ports, which service deliveries of the agricultural and metallurgical products to other countries,” the general said at an annual meeting of the Union of Defense Industry Enterprises of the Sverdlovsk Region.
An immediate response came from Moldova which feels threatened by this declared goal. There is greater potential for fighting to break out beyond the Russian and Ukrainian theatre of war.
