Russia plans to seize “the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine” to create a corridor from Russia to annexed Crimea, NATO President Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday.
Russian troops are being withdrawn from Kyiv to “regroup, rearm, replenish and reorient eastward,” he told a conference ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Wednesday.
“In the coming weeks, we expect further pressure from Russia in eastern and southern Ukraine to try to capture the entire Donbas and build a land bridge to the occupied Crimea,” Stoltenberg said.