General Sergey Rudskoy, head of the Main Operational Directorate (GOU) of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, said Friday the main goal in Ukraine is now the “liberation” of the eastern Donbass region, per Interfax, which is a pretty obvious walk back from the complete domination of the entire country and decapitation of its government that had been planned – poorly.
“Initially, we did not plan to storm [the cities] in order to prevent destruction and minimize losses among personnel and civilians,” Rudskoy said at a briefing. “Although we do not rule out such a possibility, however, as individual groupings complete the tasks set, and they are successfully solved, our forces and means will be concentrated on the main thing – the complete liberation of Donbass,” said Rudskoy, adding they’re only attacking Kyiv and other cities “with the aim of causing such damage to military infrastructure, equipment, personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the results of which allow not only to tie down their forces and do not give them the opportunity to strengthen their grouping in the Donbas, but also will not allow them to do this until complete liberation by the Russian army of the territories of the [Donetsk] and [Luhansk].”