Russia has ruled out withdrawing its armed forces from Ukraine and vowed to continue fighting. This Wednesday, a senior official of the Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine, Denis Pushilin, even assured, in an interview with the Ria-Novosti press agency, that he wanted to go “liberate Odessa and Cherniguiv”two Ukrainian cities located respectively in the south and north, far from the current front line.
Asked about these remarks, Dmitri Peskov tempered them, saying that the priority was to “to protect the people of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions”.