Putin says Russia wants buffer zone in Kharkiv but has no plans to capture city

Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures as he talks to students of the Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin, northeastern China’s Heilongjiang Province, on Friday (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region aims to create a buffer zone but he has no plans to capture the city.

Speaking to reporters on Friday on a visit to Harbin, China, Mr Putin said that Moscow launched attacks in the Kharkiv region in response to the Ukrainian shelling of Russia’s Belgorod region.

“I have said publicly that if it continues we will be forced to create a security zone, a sanitary zone,” he said.

Mr Putin said Russian troops were “advancing daily in according to plan”.

He added that Russia has no plans to capture Kharkiv for now.

Mr Putin’s comments on his trip to China were his first on the offensive launched on May 10, which opened a new front in the war and displaced thousands of Ukrainians within few days.

It came hours after a massive Ukrainian drone attack on Russian-occupied Crimea early on Friday caused power cutoffs in the city of Sevastopol while damaging aircraft and fuel storage at an airbase.

In southern Russia, Russian authorities said the attack also set a refinery ablaze.