JRL NEWSWATCH: “Putin Calls Talks a ‘Dead End’ but Limits War Aim to Eastern Ukraine” – New York Times
“… Putin … said .. Tuesday that peace talks with Ukraine had reached a ‘dead end’ and he falsely called the evidence of Russian atrocities in a Kyiv suburb ‘fake’ … insist[ing] that Russia would persist in its invasion[,] [s]peaking at … a newly built spaceport in Russia’s Far East …. But the operation’s goals, he said, centered on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russia separatists have been fighting since 2014. It was the first time … Putin himself … effectively defined a more limited aim for the war, focusing on control of the Donbas — and not all of Ukraine ….”