Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov admitted that the "geographical tasks" of the "special operation" have changed. He stated that this was due to the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine, RIA Novosti quotes .
According to Lavrov, now the tasks include not only the “DNR” and “LNR”.
He again cited Vladimir Putin's words about "denazification and demilitarization", but added that in March in Istanbul, at a meeting of negotiators, there was a different geography and that Russia's willingness to accept the Ukrainian proposal "relied on that geography." Lavrov also listed the regions now occupied by Russia.
“Now the geography is different. This is far from being only the DPR and LPR, it is also the Kherson region, the Zaporozhye region and a number of other territories, and this process continues, and continues consistently and persistently.”
The minister added that geographic objectives will be pushed even further from the current line as the West supplies Ukraine with long-range weapons, such as the HIMARS MLRS. Russia cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Volodymyr Zelensky or “whoever replaces him” will control to have weapons, Lavrov stressed. He believes that the weapon will pose a threat to the territory of Russia and the republics that "declared their independence."
Earlier in June, Russia's permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said that the "special operation" in Ukraine would not end until "Ukraine's shelling of Donbass stops."
Since the beginning of the war, the Russian authorities have rarely explained its goals and the time of its end. President Vladimir Putin, announcing the start of the "special operation", said that it was needed for the "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine. Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, argued that the war had two goals: to protect the inhabitants of the “LPR”, as well as the destruction of the “militarist machine” and “denazification” of these regions, so that “there would be no nationalists who promote an absolutely anti-Russian, Russophobic course and trying to push Russia and Ukraine together.”