Russia's Demented Scorched Earth Goal in Ukraine

"Russians again deliberately target areas where civilians congregate. This is sheer terrorism."

"[Sloviansk and Kramatorsk suffered heavy shelling overnight]...They are now also the main line of assault for the enemy."

"There is no safe place without shelling in the Donetsk region."

Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko

"The enemy is trying to improve its tactical position."

"[They] advanced -- before being repulsed by our soldiers and retreating with losses."

Ukrainian military update

 

"The West wants to fight us until the last Ukrainian,"

"It's a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it looks like it's heading in that direction."

"Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven't even yet started anything in earnest."

"[Russia remains ready to sit down for talks to end the fighting - but] those who refuse to do so should know that the longer it lasts the more difficult it will be for them to make a deal with us."

"We are hearing that they want to defeat us on the battlefield."

"Let them try."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Service members of pro-Russian troops in the city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk Region  Sky News

 

Luhansk as one of the two provinces that make up eastern Ukraine's industrial heartland, the Donbas, having fallen to the constant Russian aerial bombardment, shelling, artillery, Moscow has ordered full attention be switched to the Donetsk province to enable it to gain full possession of the two self-proclaimed 'Republics', named as such by ethnic Russian rebels whom the Russian military in 2014 surreptitiously fought alongside, trained and armed, before the Russian annexation of Crimea.

Ukrainian officials now expect Moscow will focus its efforts on the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in Donetsk, following the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk falling to Russian forces. Russian forces on Tuesday struck a market and a residential area in Sloviansk, where several people were killed and another seven were injured. An auto supply shop was hit, flames engulfing rows of market stalls, while firefighters attempted to extinguish the blaze.

And while Russia's defence ministry repeats ad infinitum that it never targets residential areas, it had made use of high-precision weaponry to destroy command centres and artillery in Donetsk. Ukraine is still in control of some major cities in the province. With the admission of Russian troops using high-precision weapons, claims that it deliberately targets civilian enclaves are fairly well validated by the ministry's own admission, denials aside.

On the propaganda front Russia is also ramping up its rhetoric, where Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin claiming Ukraine had become a "terrorist state", exerting itself to ensure Russia would not confine its invasion to the borders of the Donbas. This claim is beyond absurd; a nation that has been violently invaded, in seeking to defend itself and its people reacting with the same military intent as the invader is a "terrorist state" while the invader's violent destruction and mass killing is a "liberation" event.

On the other hand, the statement also stands as a hint that Russia is planning to expand its war aims after abandoning offensives on Kyiv and Kharkiv in reaction to the fierce Ukrainian resistance in the conflict's early stages when the goal was clearly a Russian plan to destroy the state apparatus of Ukraine and dominate the entire country, before retreating to the Donbas. In the process it is prepared to reduce the country's towns and cities to rubble.

Russian forces are advancing west towards the city of Kramatorsk