Not just Donbas: Putin wants to control Kyiv and Odesa - #FT

According to two people who spoke with Financial Times, "Putin is increasingly focused on seizing the Donbas, despite privately expressing readiness to freeze hostilities at current front lines at various previous stages of the war."

"I insisted that he finish at the current front lines. But he keeps saying: 'No, I cannot compromise on this issue,'" said one of the interlocutors.

Kherson and Zaporizhzhia did not have the same "symbolic significance" for Putin as Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and the Donbas, where it began a slow proxy war that same year, the person added. But they remained a key objective of the war effort.

"A breakthrough on the battlefield still looks distant. Russia's advance has slowed to a glacial pace, while Ukraine has inflicted more damage on Putin's forces both on the front line and in the rear," the publication states.

"Compared to the Donbas, capturing Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would be even more difficult. The largest eponymous cities of the two regions are located across the Dnipro on land from which Putin's troops have either withdrawn or never held," the publication writes.

"But Putin's true ambitions likely remain securing dominance over Ukraine at least along the entire Dnipro, which would include capturing Kyiv and the key Black Sea port of Odesa," according to two people involved in back-channel negotiations to end the war.

"He won't take Zaporizhzhia, he won't take the Donbas, he won't take Kherson. But remember that the plan was always to take Kyiv. The task is set and must be completed," said one of the interlocutors.