Pushed back from Kyiv, what's Russia's military strategy now?
CNN
Phase two of Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- an offensive in the eastern Donbas region -- is underway. The question is whether it will be any more successful and competent than phase one, and whether Ukraine will have enough troops and weapons to impede or even block it.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that the operation in the Donbas is "a very important moment of this entire special operation."
The Russian goal is clear and publicly stated: to secure all of Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk -- parts of which Russian-backed separatists have controlled since 2014. A second aim is to crush the remaining resistance in the port city of Mariupol to consolidate a land bridge linking the Russian region of Rostov with Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine eight years ago.
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