Russia signaled a possible recalibration of its war aims in Ukraine on Friday as the Kremlin faced spreading global ostracism for the brutal invasion, hardened Western economic punishments and a determined Ukrainian resistance that appeared to be making some gains on the ground.
A statement by Russia’s Defense Ministry said the goals of the “first stage of the operation” had been “mainly accomplished,” with Ukraine’s combat capabilities “significantly reduced,” and that it would now focus on securing Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting for eight years.
The Defense Ministry statement was ambiguous about further possible Russian territorial ambitions in Ukraine, where its ground forces have been mostly stymied by the unexpectedly strong Ukrainian military response.
But on a day when President Biden was visiting U.S. soldiers in Poland near the Ukrainian border, the statement suggested the possibility that the Russians were looking for a way to salvage some kind of achievement before the costs of the war they launched a month ago became impossibly onerous.
While Russia “does not exclude” that its forces will storm major Ukrainian cities such as Chernihiv, Mykolaiv and the capital, Kyiv, the Defense Ministry statement said that taking them over was not the primary objective.
“As individual units carry out their tasks — and they are being solved successfully — our forces and means will be concentrated on the main thing: the complete liberation of the Donbas,” Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi, a senior Russian military commander, said in the statement, his first since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.
Whether General Rudskoi’s statement was sincere or simply strategic misdirection was difficult to assess. But the statement amounted to the most direct acknowledgment yet that Russia may be unable to take full control of Ukraine and would instead target the Donbas region, where Russia has recognized the independence of two Kremlin-backed separatist areas that it calls the “Donetsk People’s Republic” and the “Luhansk People’s Republic.”
Russia has also insisted that Ukraine recognize its control of Crimea, which President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces seized from Ukraine in 2014.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has ruled out ceding those regions to stop the war.
Pavel Luzin, a Russian military analyst, cautioned that the public pronouncements of Russian military commanders should be regarded skeptically. While Russia could indeed be narrowing its war aims, he said, General Rudskoi’s statement could also be a feint as Russia regroups for a new offensive.
“We could say that this is a signal that we’re no longer insisting on dismantling Ukrainian statehood,” Mr. Luzin said. “But I would rather see it as a distracting maneuver.”
General Rudskoi’s statement came as Ukraine acknowledged that Russian forces had been “partially successful” in achieving one of their key objectives — securing a land corridor from Russia to the Crimean Peninsula.
While Russia already controlled much of the area, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said the route allowed Russian troops and supplies to flow between Crimea and Russia.
But some Ukrainian officials said the significance of such a route might be overstated. Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine under Mr. Zelensky, described the land bridge as a minor Russian victory and said the Kremlin was moving to secure Donetsk and Luhansk to “sell to the Russian public as a potential victory.”
In Moscow, Mr. Putin, who has made any criticism of the war a potential crime, used a televised…