Russia announces that the “complete liberation” of Donbas has begun

The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrovannounced this Tuesday that the next phase of the military campaign of Russia in Ukraine has begun, focused on “complete liberation” of the pro-Russian provinces of Donetsk and Luganskin the Donbas region.

“The operation in eastern Ukraine is aimed, as already announced, at the complete liberation of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics. This operation will continue, the next phase of this special operation is starting,” he said in an interview with the network. India Today television broadcast by his department.

“And, it seems to me, now it will be a important moment in this special operation,” added Lavrov, the first senior Russian official to publicly confirm that Russia’s great battle for Donbas has begun, after the Ukrainian president warned on Monday, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Lavrov maintained that Ukraine failed to “value” the withdrawal of Russian troops three weeks ago from the regions of Kyiv Y Chernigivin the north of the country, and the region of sumiin the northeast.

“We changed the configuration of our military presence in Ukraine, this was announced immediately after the meeting in Istanbul” on March 29, he noted.

“We said that since we believe that (the Ukrainians) have put under consideration what could form the basis of an agreement, we, as a gesture of goodwill, changed the configuration in the Chernigov and kyiv regions, but this was not appreciated, but it was organized immediately Bucha“, said.

Lavrov was thus referring to the massacre of civilians discovered in Bucha after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the kyiv region, of which Ukraine and the West accuse Russia, which in turn describes what happened as a “staging“.

The foreign minister assured that Russia “will not rest until the truth is established” about what happened in Bucha.

Lavrov maintained that “this plot” developed in the same way as that “of the Skripals, Litvinenko and Navalni and the Malaysia Airlines Boeing”, referring to the poisoning or attempted poisoning of two former Russian spies and the opposition Alexei Navalniof which the West accuses Russia, in addition to the shooting down of flight MH-17 in eastern Ukraine by a BUK missile that belonged to that country.

The head of Russian diplomacy also assured that Russia does not intend to change “the regime” in Ukraine.

“We are not going to change the regime in Ukraine, we have talked about this many times. We want Ukrainians to decide for themselves how they want to live“, he said, despite having justified at the beginning of the military campaign the offensive in Ukraine with the “denazification” from the neighboring country and referring on several occasions to the “Nazi regime” in kyiv.

Likewise, he considered that the West took advantage of the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, for allegedly pressuring him to ignore the Minsk peace accords for Donbas, where the pro-Russian forces of Donetsk and Lugansk and the Ukrainian Army had already been fighting since 2014.

“They did everything possible to reinforce in him his desire to ignore the Minsk Agreements,” he said.

In Lavrov’s opinion, there can be no serious negotiations with Zelensky, since the latter, he said, “constantly changes his point of view in diametrically opposite directions.”

“He talks a lot. It depends on what he drinks or smokes, he says a lot,” the Russian diplomat said in response to a question about Russia’s alleged intention to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

Lavrov assured that Russia “is not considering the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.” “We are talking about conventional weapons only,” he said.