U.S. National Security Adviser Says Russia Pivoting to Offensive in Ukraine’s East

(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden's national security adviser said the U.S. believes Russia is repositioning forces to focus on an offensive in Ukraine's eastern Donbas and Luhansk provinces, in a major revision of Moscow's war goals.

“All indications are that Russia will seek to surround and overwhelm Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine,” Jake Sullivan, director of the U.S. National Security Council, said in a briefing Monday. 

The U.S. expects that Russian leader Vladimir Putin would then “use tactical success to propagate a narrative of progress and downplay military failures,” he added.

“Russia has tried to subjugate the whole of Ukraine, and it has failed,” Sullivan said.

U.S. predictions beginning late last year that Russia was planning to invade Ukraine turned out to be accurate, despite repeated denials from the Kremlin. 

Sullivan said that the U.S. now expects Moscow to focus on the Donbas and Luhansk regions while retaining the city of Kherson, in Ukraine's south, in order to maintain control of Crimea's water supply, and pressuring Kharkiv, in the north, to occupy Ukraine's military. Russia will continue to strike targets across Ukraine by air, he said, “to cause military and economic damage and frankly to cause terror.”

He said the new phase of  Russia's offensive could last “months or longer.”

The U.S. will continue to supply the Kyiv government with weaponry to fight back against the invasion, Sullivan said. The Ukrainian military defeated Russia's attempted capture of the capital, forcing the Kremlin's forces to retreat from towns surrounding Kyiv over the past several days.

In the wake of the retreat, Ukrainian forces say they've discovered scores of atrocities by Russian forces, including large-scale murder of civilians. The Kremlin has denied responsibility. Biden said Monday that Putin could face a war-crimes trial over the alleged actions of his country's military.

Read more: Biden Floats Putin War-Crimes Trial, More Russian Sanctions

“The Ukrainians are defending their homeland courageously and the United States will continue to back them,” Sullivan said. 

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