Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the " The British Department of Defense announced this on Twitter..

On July 20, 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Russia had expanded the scope of the war beyond the territories temporarily occupied by militants of the illegal armed groups "

Lavrov argued that the war now includes new additional territories, in particular the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, due to the fact that Western countries are supplying long-range weapons to Ukraine.

" Russia did not " Maintaining long-term control over these territories was most likely the initial goal of the invasion, ”said British intelligence..

The British Ministry of Defense recalled that Russia invaded these territories in February, and the fake "

“There is a realistic possibility that Lavrov made such statements to pave the way for the holding of pseudo-referendums in the temporarily occupied territories outside the Luhansk and Donetsk regions,” British intelligence notes..

Also, according to British intelligence analysts, in the Donbass, small-scale Russian offensives remain focused on the Bakhmut direction, but make minimal progress..

Latest Defense Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 24 July 2022Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t. co/N1aAOViSoa? #StandWithUkraine? pic. twitter. com/3JrD4THmNZ.

— Ministry of Defense? (@DefenceHQ) July 24, 2022.

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Earlier it was reported that Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin and US State Department spokesman Ned Price reacted to Lavrov's statement.. The United States is convinced that from the very beginning, Russia planned to capture more of the territory of our country than the Donbass.

And German Foreign Minister Annalena Burbock considers the words of her colleague Sergey Lavrov to be Russian propaganda that the geography of the tasks of the war has expanded.