The scope of military action has been expanded to include more combat areas, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday. Moscow’s plans – amid what it calls a “special military operation” – could expand even further if the West delivers long-range missiles to Ukraine, he said, as reported by the state news agency RIA Novosti. Lavrov’s comments were the clearest admission yet that Russia’s war aims have expanded during the five months of the war. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded that Russia rejected diplomacy and wanted “blood, not talks.” Also on Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed that the US will send four more High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems (Himars) – which can fire six missiles simultaneously – to Ukraine after already sending eight. The devastation caused by an airstrike in the Donbas town of Pryvillya in June (AFP via Getty Images) On Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered military chiefs to prioritize destroying Ukraine’s long-range missiles and artillery weapons after it used Western-supplied weapons to strike Russian supply lines. He said the weapons were being used to attack populated areas in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists and to set fire to wheat fields and grain silos. It came as former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev claimed that peace in Ukraine would be “on Russia’s terms”. The now-deputy head of Russia’s Security Council insisted that the country was going to seize more parts of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (Sputnik) Mr Medvedev said: “Russia will achieve all its goals. There will be peace – on our terms.” Earlier this month, Vladimir Putin’s troops seized Luhansk – the region along with Donetsk that makes up the Donbass region – amid Russia’s “main objective” to “liberate” the region after failing to gain control elsewhere . Russian forces have also made some advances in the south – especially in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions – while continuing to fire rockets across the country, causing dozens more deaths this week alone. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Putin denied that he had any plans to occupy Ukrainian territory. He said his goal was to demilitarize and “de-Nazify” Ukraine, while also insisting that NATO had broken a post-Cold War promise that the military alliance would not expand eastward. Ukraine and its Western allies rejected his claim of neo-Nazis as justification for Russia’s expansion.
