Hopes wane for Ukraine Easter truce as Russia presses campaign

Hopes for a weekend truce in Ukraine to celebrate the Orthodox Easter faded with talks between Moscow and Kyiv stalled as Russia said it aimed to take full control over the east and south of its neighbor.

The war enters its third month on Sunday but a senior Russian military officer said "the second phase of the special operation" -- as Moscow terms its invasion of Ukraine -- had just begun.

"One of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over the Donbas and southern Ukraine," Major General Rustam Minnekaev said on Friday.

Russian forces, which withdrew from around Kyiv and the north of Ukraine after being frustrated in their attempts to take over the capital, already occupy much of the eastern Donbas region and the south.

Minnekaev said their focus was now to "provide a land corridor to Crimea," which Russia annexed in 2014, and towards a breakaway pro-Russian region of Moldova, Transnistria, where the general claimed Russian-speaking people were "being oppressed".

Ukrainian authorities have vowed to fight on and drive the Russian troops from their land, but they also sought an Easter pause.

"Unfortunately, Russia rejected the proposal to establish an Easter truce," President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday.
In his regular Friday night address, Zelensky said the Russian general's comments were a clear articulation of Moscow's goals.

"This only confirms what I have already said multiple times: Russia's invasion of Ukraine was intended only as a beginning," he said.

"We will defend ourselves as long as possible... but all the nations who, like us, believe in the victory of life over death must fight with us."

Ukraine's government, emboldened by an influx of Western weaponry,...