A People's Militia fighter patrols the area. Archive photoDONETSK, May 26. The army of the Donetsk People's Republic has already entered the Kherson, Zaporozhye and Kharkov regions of Ukraine, it is impossible to protect the Donbass only by reaching the borders of the republics, the head of the DPR Denis Pushilin said in an interview with RIA Novosti.» Our units, that is, our reserve regiments, are present in a number of regions… I'm talking about the Kherson region, about the Zaporozhye region, about the Kharkov region,» Pushilin said. The head of the DPR stressed that this is not about the liberation of Kharkov, but about protecting the republics «in full». «That is, in fact, this liberation operation is about the same thing: it was impossible to protect the republics only by reaching the borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics — we would simply push the enemy back. But those shelling, that aggression from Ukraine would have continued for an unlimited period time,» he explained. Pushilin expressed confidence that with the support of the West, the threat from Kyiv would become more serious, as a result of which the shelling, which Ukrainian nationalists have been engaged in all recent years, would continue on the new line of contact. Russia has been holding military operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. As Vladimir Putin emphasized, its goal is «to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years.» According to the Ministry of Defense, the Russian armed forces strike only at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops. By the end of March, they managed to «significantly reduce the combat potential of Ukraine.» The agency called the liberation of Donbass the main goal of the operation.
