After giving up on a brief try at peace talks Ukrianian President Petro Poroshenko appears to have sided with the nation’s hawkish far-right MPs, and is vowing to push the military offensive after ethnic Russian rebels in the east to “purge” the cities of opposition.
Poroshenko is hyping the conquest of the city of Slovyansk, a target for months, as a victory of “incredible symbolic importance” and the first of many, as the military offensive expands.
And it’s going to expand, according to the government leaders, as the rebels fall back to their main city of Donetsk, the military says they’re going to continue to expand the offensive until they’ve retaken the whole region.
Large numbers of ethnic Russian civilians have already fled the region, and with the ultranationalist portion of the country looking to crack down even harder on them after the rebellion, the prospect of a settlement seems less and less achievable.
