Russia wants a buffer zone in Kharkiv but has no plans to capture city: President Putin

Kyiv: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region aims to create a buffer zone but has no plans to capture the city.

Putin’s comments on a trip to China were his first on the offensive launched on May 10, which opened a new front in the war and displaced thousands of Ukrainians within few days. It came hours after a massive Ukrainian drone attack on the Russia-occupied Crimean Peninsula early Friday caused power cutoffs in the city of Sevastopol while damaging aircraft and fuel storage at an airbase. In southern Russia, Russian authorities said the attack also set a refinery ablaze.

Moscow launched attacks in the Kharkiv region in response to Ukrainian shelling of Russia’s Belgorod region, Putin told reporters Friday on a visit to Harbin, China.

“I have said publicly that if it continues, we will be forced to create a security zone, a sanitary zone,” he said. “That’s what we are doing.”

Putin said that Russian troops were “advancing daily according to plan” and said that there were no plans to capture Kharkiv, for now.

Ukrainian troops were fighting Friday to halt Russian advances in Kharkiv region that began late last week.

The town of Vovchansk, located 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Russian border, has been a hot spot in the fighting in recent days. Ukrainian authorities have evacuated around 8,000 civilians from the town.

The Russian army’s usual tactic is to reduce towns and villages to ruins with aerial strikes before its units move in.

By starting the new offensive, Russian troops “expanded the zone of active hostilities by almost 70 kilometers” (about 45 miles), in an effort to force Ukraine to spread its forces and use reserve troops, Ukraine’s military chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Friday.

Separately, in his strongest remarks yet on Ukraine’s upcoming peace conferences slated for next month, Putin said it was a vain attempt to enforce terms of a peaceful settlement on Russia. Putin emphasized that Russia wasn’t invited to the Swiss-hosted meeting.