Ned Price: Russia’s Expanded Goals In Ukraine Reflect What U.S. Has Been Warning About

Washington on Wednesday made it clear that it will not let Moscow's attempts to annex Ukrainian territories go unchallenged and unpunished as Russia’s military “tasks” now seem to go beyond the eastern Donbas region, TURAN's U.S. correspondent reports.

Sergey Lavrov, Puin's top diplomat, on Wednesday became the most senior figure in Russia to speak openly of its war goals in territorial terms — nearly 5 months after Putin launched the invasion — saying that "geographical tasks will extend still further from the current line."

"Now the geography is different,” Lavrov was quoted as saying. “It’s not just Donetsk and Luhansk, it’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and a number of other territories.”

While Lavrov’s comments have been seen as the clearest acknowledgment of the Kremlin’s war goals, it was also "a remarkable echo of what you’ve heard from us in recent months," State Department's spokesperson Ned Price said during his daily press conference.

"... This war is nothing more than a war of territorial conquest. That’s what we warned about before February 24th; that is what we have consistently said ever since," Price added.

He continued: "Whatever else we might have heard from Russia prior to that day in February and what we have heard since, this is not about European security. This is not about the other false pretexts that the Russians have put forward."

Washington will continue to stand with Ukraine in support of its sovereignty and in support of its independence, in support of its territorial integrity. "No state, however large, should be in a position to change international borders by force."

Price also drew attention to Putin's recent comment that Russia and Ukraine were on the precipice of peace as recently as March, and it was Ukraine that walked away. "... We know that is untrue. We know that is a lie," he said, adding that Lavrov in his comments "provided further evidence of the fact that these claims are entirely hollow."

"It has always been Ukraine that has sought to achieve a diplomatic resolution to this conflict. President Zelenskyy has been very clear that this conflict can only end through dialogue and diplomacy. We have been very clear that we are willing, as are our partners, to support any effort towards diplomacy. It has been Russia that time and again has closed the door or, perhaps more aptly, never opened the door to the real – to real diplomacy that the parties seek" the spokesperson explained.

Asked by TURAN about Lavrov's blaming the West for the Kremlin's changing its own rhetoric, Price said it was "entirely consistent, unfortunately with what we’ve seen from the Russian Federation since well before February 24th."

"... Now that that invasion is well underway, now that that invasion has proven itself to the world to be nothing more than a war of territorial conquest, a war of territorial aggression, the likes of which we haven’t seen since mid-last century, it is no surprise that Foreign Minister Lavrov and others continue to try to put the blame on the West when the West and the international community knows full well that the blame rests squarely with the Kremlin and with President Putin," he added.

Meanwhile, the U.S estimates that Russian casualties in Ukraine so far have reached about 15,000 killed and perhaps 45,000 wounded, the director of the CIA said on Wednesday.

“And, the Ukrainians have suffered as well — probably a little less than that. But, you know, significant casualties,” William Burns said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

The Pentagon in its turn made it clear on Wednesday that Ukraine has not yet lost the Donbas to Russia after weeks of intense fighting.

“It’s very intense,”  Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters. “A lot of violence, tens of thousands of artillery rounds every 24-hour period and lots of casualties on both sides, lots of destruction of villages,” he added.

Milley said that Russia has only advanced about 10 miles in the past three months. “It’s not lost yet. Ukrainians are making the Russians pay for every inch of territory that they gain,” he added.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.