Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces not to storm the last remaining Ukrainian stronghold in the besieged city of Mariupol on Thursday but instead to block it 'so that not even a fly comes through':
In this image provided by the European Council, European Council President Charles Michel, center, looks at destroyed vehicles as he is given a tour of the region of Borodyanka, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 20, 2022. KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to claim victory in the strategic port of Mariupol on Thursday, even as he ordered his troops not to storm the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the war's iconic battleground.
Even though Putin painted the mission to take Mariupol already a success and said the city had been"liberated," until the plant falls, he cannot declare a complete victory. Russian officials now say capturing the Donbas, Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, is the war's main goal. This week, Moscow's forces opened a new phase of the war, in a deadly drive along a front from the northeastern city of Kharkiv to the Azov Sea. Detaching the region from the rest of Ukraine would give Putin a badly needed victory two months into the war, after the botched attempt to storm the capital, Kyiv, and amid mounting Russian losses.
"It seems to me that the Russian agenda now is not to capture these really difficult places where the Ukrainians can hold out in the urban centers, but to try and capture territory and also to encircle the Ukrainian forces and declare a huge victory," Parry said.
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