Ukraine war: What you need to know on Wednesday
Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has made the clearest expression yet of Moscow's growing aims in the Ukraine war.
On Wednesday, Lavrov said his country's military will now venture beyond eastern Ukraine, as their “geographical objectives” are no longer limited to the eastern Donbas region.
Speaking to Russian state media, Lavrov claimed peace talks made no sense at the moment, as the West was pushing Ukraine to fight rather than the negotiating table.
Russia wanted "blood, not talks", said Ukraine's foreign minister in response.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly denied wanting to occupy Ukraine. He then said his aim was to "demilitarise" and "denazify" Ukraine in a "special military operation".
Both Kyiv and the West dismissed this as a pretext for an imperial-style war of expansion.
But Lavrov said geographical realities had changed since failed peace talks in Turkey in late March, which did not produce any breakthrough.
At the time, he said Russia was focusing on the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) in eastern Ukraine.
"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," Lavrov said, referring to areas outside the Donbas which Russian forces are battling to capture.
His comments come as Ukrainian missiles struck a strategically important bridge on the Dnipro River in the Kherson region
Kherson — site of a major ship-building industry at the confluence of the Dnipro River and the Black Sea near Russian-annexed Crimea — is one of several areas a US government spokesman said Russia is trying to take over now.
White House national security
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