KYIV: The United States warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready for a long war in Ukraine and will not stop at the eastern Donbas region where fighting is currently raging.
Washington’s bleak prediction came as Ukraine said its membership of the European Union was a question of “war and peace” for the whole continent as it faces up to Moscow.
As it battled Russian attempts to advance in the east, Kyiv hailed what it said was EU powerhouse Germany’s change of stance on a Russian oil embargo and on supplying arms to Ukraine.
Violence still raged in southern Ukraine with overnight missile strikes in the port of Odessa, while officials said some 1,000 troops were trapped in the Azovstal steelworks in the devastated city of Mariupol.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 but Ukrainian forces managed to push Moscow’s forces back from Kyiv, and the conflict is now well into its third month.
Putin gave few hints on his plans in a speech during a huge military parade in Moscow on Monday, saying only that Russian troops were defending the “Motherland” and blaming the West for the conflict.
But US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Tuesday that Putin will not end the war with the Donbas campaign and is determined to build a land bridge to the Russian-controlled territory in Moldova.
US intelligence also views it as increasingly likely that Putin will mobilise his entire country, including ordering martial law, and is counting on his perseverance to wear down Western support for Ukraine.
Moscow switched its focus to the Russian-speaking Donbas region, where separatists have been fighting since 2014, after failing to take Kyiv.
Ukraine’s presidency said the “epicentre of the fighting has moved” to Bilogorivka in the Lugansk region, the site of a deadly Russian air strike on a school on Sunday that Ukrainian officials said killed 60 people.
Shelling also continued in Ukraine’s easternmost strongholds, the sister cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, it said. An AFP team saw columns of Ukrainian trucks moving away from Severodonetsk on Monday.
