Russia 'revising its war aims' in Ukraine following military setbacks, White House says
WASHINGTON — Russia is “revising its war aims” in Ukraine, seeking to consolidate gains in southern and eastern regions while continuing its “wanton and brazen attacks on civilian targets” elsewhere across the country, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a White House briefing on Monday.
Sullivan spoke as images continued to circulate of an apparent massacre of Ukrainian citizens in Bucha, a suburb of the capital city, Kyiv. Earlier in the day, President Biden reiterated his previous assertion that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be treated as a “war criminal” for his invasion of Ukraine.
“This guy is brutal,” Biden said of his Kremlin counterpart.
Although peace talks conducted in Istanbul last week appeared to be making headway, the Bucha killings could complicate efforts at achieving a ceasefire. They were seemingly committed as Russian forces retreated from Kyiv, part of what Sullivan described as consolidation around the regions that Russia has occupied since 2014, when it seized the Crimean Peninsula and Russian-backed militias seized control in Luhansk and Donetsk, two regions on Ukraine’s eastern border with large populations of ethnic Russians.
“All indications are that Russia will seek to surround and overwhelm Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine,” Sullivan said. “We anticipate that Russian commanders are now executing the redeployment” from Kyiv and elsewhere in the north, he added.
And even as Sullivan praised the “extraordinary and courageous” effort of the Ukrainian military, which has thus far repelled a much larger force, he warned of a “protracted” next stage of the war that could see Russia pulling troops back from some areas and redoubling efforts in others, particularly those it has controlled for the past eight years.
He added that although Ukraine has reclaimed land lost in late February and early March, Russia can be expected to “launch air and missile strikes across the rest of the country to cause military and economic damage and, frankly, to cause terror.” Such aerial assaults have devastated the port of Mariupol, as well as the city of Kharkiv, near the Russian border.
“Russia still has forces available to outnumber Ukraine,” Sullivan cautioned, a reminder that Russia’s army is much bigger. The Kremlin is accustomed to long occupations of the sort it most recently oversaw in Chechnya.
The Biden administration is “working around the clock to fulfill Ukraine’s main security requests,” Sullivan said, describing an aid package approved last Friday that includes Puma drones, laser-guided systems and medical supplies, as well as other military equipment.
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