Russia’s foreign minister said Moscow had expanded its war aims for its invasion of Ukraine, the strongest sign yet that it aims to annex parts of the country currently under its control.
Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday Russia’s goals were more ambitious than Moscow had declared at the start of the war in February, when it claimed its goal was to “liberate” the eastern Donbas border region.
Moscow’s war aims now extend to the provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, which are mostly occupied by Russian forces, Lavrov said. The Donbas region is now largely under the control of two Moscow-backed separatist groups in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, denied at the start of the war that Moscow had aspirations to take more of Ukraine, despite a failed assault on Kyiv in the early weeks of the invasion.
But Lavrov said the collapse of peace talks in the spring meant “the geography is different now”. He told state newswire RIA Novosti: “It’s far from just the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, it’s also Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and a number of other territories.”
Lavrov warned that Russia could go further still in what he called “an ongoing process” if the west continued to supply Ukraine with advanced weaponry.
The comments were the highest-level official indication almost five months into the invasion of Ukraine that Russia intends to seize more territory.
His statement came after the White House warned on Tuesday that Russia was using an “annexation playbook” including “sham referenda” to claim people in the occupied areas wanted to join Russia.
The annexations would probably be modelled on Russia’s seizure of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, when it claimed a referendum showed the vast majority of residents had cast their votes for Russian rule.
Since peace talks to end the war collapsed in April, Putin has said he sees no prospect for a settlement and appears determined to seize as much territory as possible, according to people familiar with his thinking.
Russia has since appointed separatist officials to run the parts of southern Ukraine it controls, who said they would make the rouble the area’s official currency and hold referendums on joining Russia.
Several senior officials from Putin’s United Russia party visited the region and claimed that “Russia is here forever”.
Ukraine said the moves showed Russia had never been serious about peace negotiations and had always planned to effectively end the country’s existence in its present form.
Lavrov on Wednesday warned that Russia would intensify its efforts further still if the west continued to supply Ukraine with long-range weaponry such as the US-manufactured Himars rocket launcher system.
“If the west continues to pump Ukraine full of weaponry out of impotent rage or a desire to exacerbate the situation [ . . .] then that means our geographical tasks will move even further from the current line,” he added.
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