Former President Says Russia Will Achieve All Its Goals: There Will Be Peace In Ukraine, With Moscow Deciding

Dmitry Medvedev. (Wikimedia Commons/Goverment.ru)

JAKARTA - Senior Russian officials say the country will achieve all its goals and there will be peace in Ukraine, as it ramps up attacks on targets in Ukraine with missiles.

More than two weeks have passed since Russia's last major territorial gain, capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, with the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army saying on Tuesday that Moscow forces were busy propping up their positions in the recently captured territory and carrying out ground offensives that limited but not successful, although in a variety of different locations.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president who is now deputy head of the Security Council, said Moscow was ready to do whatever it took to win the battle in Ukraine.

"Russia will achieve all its goals. There will be peace, on our decisive terms," Medvedev said.

Earlier, the Kremlin said there was no time limit for the conflict which Ukraine and the West called a war of unprovoked aggression, designed to seize territory and erase Ukraine's identity.

Meanwhile, Britain's Ministry of Defence, which supports Kyiv, said it believed Russian forces could not advance quickly due to a shortage of personnel.

It said Russia faced a resource dilemma, as it had to decide how much hardware and military personnel to commit to achieving its goal of seizing full control of Ukraine's Donetsk region and how much to deploy to southern Ukraine to counter a Ukrainian counterattack.

"While Russia can still gain further territorial gains, their operational tempo and rate of progress will likely be very slow without significant operational pauses for reorganization and reparations," the ministry said.

Russia showered various areas of Ukraine with missiles on Tuesday. At least one person was killed in a missile attack in the central Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, the regional governor said.