Russia's President Vladimir Putin made his first comments on Friday acknowledging, and then dismissing, Ukraine's recent string of battlefield victories that have seen Russian forces completely collapse and flee the battlefield in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv oblast.
A rapidly executed armoured counterattack by the Ukrainian forces saw nearly 8,000 sq km captured in six days.
But Putin said he was not in any hurry, adding that Russia's offensive to recapture the Donbas region in Ukraine's east remained on track. He also noted that unlike Ukraine, which is operating on a total war footing, Russia had not announced a general mobilisation for war.
"Our offensive operation in the Donbas is not stopping. They're moving forward - not at a very fast pace - but they are gradually taking more and more territory," he said after attending the SCO summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
The industrial Donbas region in east Ukraine is the focus of Russia's invasion: The battle of Donbas is an ongoing military offensive that is part of the wider eastern Ukraine offensive of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The aim of the battle is to encircle Ukrainian troops in the Donbas and to annex the entire Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts to the Russian-backed separatist states of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR).
'Russian army isn't fighting in its entirety'
In Friday's comments, Putin threatened a "more serious" response if Ukrainian attacks continue.
"I remind you that the Russian army isn't fighting in its entirety... Only the professional army is fighting."
In related news, US President Joe Biden warned Putin not to resort to the use of battlefield nuclear weapons to reverse Ukrainian gains, saying that doing so would "change the face of warfare" in a way that hadn't been seen since World War II.
Meanwhile, Western defense officials and analysts on Saturday said they believed the Russian forces were setting up a new defensive line in Ukraine’s northeast after Kyiv’s troops broke through the previous one and tried to press their advances further into the east.
Asked about concerns that Putin could unleash weapons of mass destruction if he’s thwarted on the battlefield by U.S. and NATO-backed Ukrainian forces, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen said, “I don’t think we should underestimate Putin’s adherence to his original agenda, which was to control Ukraine. I don’t think we’ve seen any reason to believe he has moved off that.”
Nor should the U.S. underestimate Putin’s “risk appetite,” Cohen said. Putin and his officials early in the war made allusions to Russia’s nuclear arsenal and to massive retaliation in warning NATO not to get involved in the conflict.
