Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, has said that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has now gone beyond the Donbas region. During a time of peace talks in Turkey, the focus was speculated to be the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics with the aim to drive out the Ukrainian government as both regions are breakaway entities.

However, Sergei Lavrov recently said, "Now the geography is different, it's far from being just the DPR and LPR, it's also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number of other territories. This process is continuing logically and persistently.”

He also wanted that if the United States continues to “pump” the Ukrainian government with weapons such as the HIMAR systems, it would mean "that means the geographical tasks will extend still further from the current line.” Russia has stated it will not and cannot allow an individual such as Volodymyr Zelenskyy or whoever replaces him to threaten the territories with long-range weapons.

This is a different story as to the intentions surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin recently claimed the operation was meant to “denazify” Ukraine. After attempts to take Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, Russia indicated the first phase of its military operation was complete and the attention will be shifted to "achieving the main goal, the liberation of Donbas.”