Russia widens war aims as Ukraine seeks debt freeze

Moscow’s military “tasks” in Ukraine now go beyond the eastern Donbas region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday, as the Kremlin’s forces shelled eastern and southern Ukraine.Lavrov also told state news agency RIA Novosti that Russia’s objectives will expand still further if the West keeps supplying Kyiv with long-range weapons such as the US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).His comments, the clearest acknowledgment yet that Russia’s war goals have expanded over the five months of war, came after Washington said it saw signs Moscow was preparing to formally annex territory it has seized in its neighbour.Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba retorted that Russia rejected diplomacy and wanted “blood, not talks”.Lavrov is the most senior figure to speak openly of Russia’s war goals in territorial terms, nearly five months after Putin launched his February 24 invasion with a denial that Russia intended to occupy its neighbour.Then, Putin said his aim was to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine — a statement dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a pretext for an imperial-style war of expansion.Lavrov told RIA Novosti geographical realities had changed since Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held peace talks in Turkey in late March that failed to produce any breakthrough.At that time, he said, the focus was on the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), self-styled Russian-backed breakaway entities in eastern Ukraine from which Moscow has said it aims to drive out Ukrainian government forces.“Now the geography is different, it’s far from being just the DPR and LPR, it’s also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number of other territories,” he said, referring to territories well beyond the Donbas that Russian forces have wholly or partly seized.“This process is continuing logically and persistently,” Lavrov said, adding that Russia might need to push even deeper.Meanwhile, Ukraine has asked its international creditors, including Western powers and the world’s largest investment firms, to freeze its debt payments for two years so it can focus its dwindling financial resources on repelling Russia.Facing an estimated 35% to 45% crash in GDP this year following Moscow’s invasion in February, Ukraine’s finance ministry said yesterday it was hoping to finalise the deferral on its roughly $20bn of debt by August 9.The delay, which was quickly backed by both the major Western governments and heavyweight funds that have lent to Kyiv, would come just in time to put off around $1.2bn of debt payments due at the start of September.