Why doesn’t Ukraine attack Russian territory? BBC News Brazil summarizes the answer to this key question about the war here.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine does not intend to attack Russian territory and argued that the country does not have the time or resources to do so. Ukraine’s counteroffensive targets, he said, areas “illegally occupied” by Russia.
“We do not attack Russian territory, we liberate our own legitimate territory,” Zelensky said during a trip to Germany in May. “We have neither the time nor the strength (to attack Russia). Nor do we have any weapons to spare with which we could do that.”
“We are preparing a counterattack on the illegally occupied areas on the basis of our legitimate constitutionally defined, internationally recognized borders.”
But how is this dispute over territories?
Since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the war has been marked by Russian attacks and conquests of parts of Ukraine’s territory – especially in the east and south of the country.
On the battlefield, Ukraine has managed to retake some of the territories that were under Russian control and prevent Moscow’s troops from advancing into the capital Kiev and into the west of the country. But there were no significant attacks from Ukraine on Russian territory. Some sporadic attacks have been reported on Russian territory, but Ukraine has always denied any involvement with them.
In May, the American newspaper Washington Post claimed that U.S. intelligence documents said that Ukraine intended to capture areas of Russia as part of its counteroffensive. These territories would serve as bargains for Ukraine in eventual peace negotiations.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive – the special operation announced by the authorities as a reaction to the Russian invasion – is in the early stages. For now, there are signs that Ukraine intends to defend and retake its own territory, as Zelensky stated.
Kiev is fighting to retake the eastern regions of Donetsk and southeastern Zaporizhzhia. There are, so far, no reports of fighting on Russian territory.
Ukraine’s goal right now is to prevent the Russians from being able to capture continuous territories in the east and south, which connect Donetsk to Crimea (which was annexed in 2014 in a move deemed illegal by the United Nations), according to BBC News security correspondent Frank Gardner.
“If Ukraine can split the territory into two parts and can hold the ground it has regained, its offensive will have succeeded,” Gardner says. “That would isolate Russian troops in the west and make it more difficult to resupply Crimea.”
*** Translated by the DEFCONPress FYI Team ***