Ukrainian officers acknowledged Friday that Russian forces had taken greater than three dozen small cities of their preliminary drive this week to grab jap Ukraine, providing the primary glimpse of what guarantees to be a grinding brawl by the Kremlin to realize broader territorial features in a brand new part of the two-month-old battle.

The preventing within the east — alongside more and more fortified traces that stretch throughout greater than 300 miles — intensified as a Russian commander signaled even wider ambitions, warning that the Kremlin’s forces aimed to take “full management” of southern Ukraine all the way in which to Moldova, Ukraine’s southwest neighbor.

Whereas it appeared unlikely that the commander, Maj. Gen. Rustam Minnekayev, would have misspoken, his warning nonetheless drew skepticism, based mostly on Russia’s possible issue in beginning one other broad offensive and the final’s comparatively obscure function within the hierarchy. However his risk couldn’t be dominated out.

The broader battle goals that he outlined at a protection business assembly in a Russian metropolis greater than 1,000 miles away from the preventing could be much more formidable than the downscaled targets set out by President Vladimir V. Putin in current weeks, which have targeted on gaining management of the Donbas area of jap Ukraine.

Some political and army specialists steered the final’s assertion may have been a part of Russia’s persevering with efforts to distract or confuse Ukraine and its allies. Normal Minnekayev’s official job entails political propaganda work and doesn’t usually cowl army technique.

On Friday, fierce preventing was underway throughout a band of southeastern Ukraine, engulfing communities on the banks of the Dnipro River. Whereas Ukrainian officers acknowledged that Russia had taken management of 42 small cities and villages in current days, they mentioned those self same locations may very well be again in Ukrainian fingers earlier than lengthy.

Western analysts mentioned Russia’s forces, in each the sluggish however largely profitable combat for the southern metropolis of Mariupol and the unsuccessful battle for Kyiv, had been battered and weakened. However quite than resting, reinforcing and re-equipping the forces, Moscow is urgent ahead within the east.

The Russian army seems to be making an attempt to safe battlefield features — together with capturing all the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, or oblasts — forward of Might 9, when Moscow holds its annual celebration of its World Conflict II victory.

“They’re not taking the pause that may be essential to re-cohere these forces, to take the week or two to cease, and put together for a wider offensive,” mentioned Mason Clark, an analyst on the Institute for the Examine of Conflict in Washington. “They’ll doubtless have the ability to take some territory. We don’t assume they’re going to have the ability to seize the whole lot of the oblasts within the subsequent three weeks.”

In his remarks on Friday, Normal Minnekayev asserted that one in all Russia’s targets was “full management of the Donbas and southern Ukraine.”

He mentioned that may permit Russia to regulate Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, “via which agricultural and metallurgical merchandise are delivered” to different international locations. Nonetheless, regardless of repeated assaults, Russia has did not seize these ports, together with Odesa, a fortified metropolis of 1 million folks.

“I wish to remind you that many Kremlin plans have been destroyed by our military and other people,” Andriy Yermak, chief of workers to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on social media in response to Normal Minnekayev’s remarks.

Normal Minnekayev additionally issued a veiled warning to Moldova, the place Moscow-backed separatists seized management of a 250-mile sliver of land often known as Transnistria in 1992.

“Management over the south of Ukraine is one other connection to Transnistria, the place there may be additionally proof of oppression of the Russian-speaking inhabitants,” the final mentioned, echoing false claims of a “genocide” towards Russian audio system in jap Ukraine that Mr. Putin used to assist justify the Feb. 24 invasion.

Transnistria has by no means been acknowledged internationally — not even by Russia. However Russia retains 1,500 troopers there, nominally to maintain the peace and guard a big Soviet-era munitions cache.

Moldova had no speedy response to the final’s assertion. A poor nation of two.6 million, Moldova is taken into account weak to additional Russian incursions. It isn’t a member of NATO or the European Union, nevertheless it unexpectedly utilized for E.U. membership final month.

Yuri Fyodorov, a Russian army analyst, mentioned that the broader goals detailed by Normal Minnekayev “from the army standpoint are unreachable.”

“All of Russia’s combat-ready items are actually concentrated within the Donbas, the place Russia failed to realize any important advances over the previous 5 days,” Mr. Fyodorov mentioned in an interview. Normal Minnekayev’s rank, he mentioned, would usually not permit him to make such sweeping coverage statements that additionally contradict what has been mentioned by the nation’s prime leaders.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, declined to touch upon Normal Minnekayev’s remarks.

As Western allies race to arm Ukraine with more and more heavy, long-range weapons, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, on a go to to India on Friday, mentioned his nation was contemplating sending tanks to Poland in order that Warsaw may then ship its personal tanks to Ukraine. The Biden administration mentioned this month that it could additionally assist switch Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine.

The Russian Protection Ministry, in its first assertion on casualties from the April 14 sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, mentioned that one crew member had died, 27 had been lacking and 396 had been evacuated. Relations of no less than 10 Moskva crew members had voiced frustration over the Kremlin’s silence, which was turning right into a take a look at of its robust grip on data that Russians obtain in regards to the battle.

Ukraine mentioned it had sunk the Moskva with two missiles — an assertion corroborated by U.S. officers — whereas Russia claimed that an onboard hearth had brought on a munitions explosion that doomed the ship.

As Russia hardened its crackdown on any home opposition to the battle, it opened a legal case towards Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian pro-democracy activist and a contributing columnist for The Washington Submit, for spreading “false data,” his lawyer mentioned Friday.

Mr. Kara-Murza, 40, arrested earlier this month, faces 10 years in jail, based on the official decree towards him posted on-line by his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov.

It mentioned he was being investigated for remarks he had made earlier than Arizona lawmakers on March 15. Mr. Kara-Murza advised an area information outlet in Phoenix that month that Russia was committing “battle crimes” in Ukraine however that “Russia and the Putin regime should not one and the identical.”

“Individuals must be infuriated by Putin’s escalating marketing campaign to silence Kara-Murza,” Fred Ryan, the writer of The Submit, mentioned in a press release.

Mr. Putin, who has turn out to be more and more vilified within the West over the battle, has not utterly rejected diplomatic engagement. On Friday, he agreed to satisfy with the United Nations secretary common, António Guterres, in Moscow subsequent week, a stark change from his refusal to even take Mr. Guterres’s cellphone calls. Nonetheless, the assembly didn’t sign a softening of Mr. Putin’s views on Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that he has mentioned mustn’t even be a sovereign nation.

Ukraine’s authorities mentioned the preventing had made it too harmful to prepare any evacuations from a battle that Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights, known as a “horror story of violations perpetrated towards civilians.”

After one other assault on the northeastern metropolis of Kharkiv on Friday, residents watched as smoke rose over retailers. Within the ruined port of Mariupol, a whole lot of civilians and the final organized Ukrainian fighters remained trapped in a sprawling metal plant, issuing pressing pleas for assist from underground bunkers. Newly launched satellite tv for pc photos of the town confirmed a whole lot of unexpectedly dug graves, lending credibility to Ukrainian claims that Russia was making an attempt to cowl up atrocities.

And within the Zaporizhzhya area of south-central Ukraine, Ukrainian troops had been dug in about two miles from Russian forces that had been making an attempt to push north in an effort to fortify a land bridge connecting Russian territory with the Crimean Peninsula, which Mr. Putin annexed in 2014.

The Ukrainian military’s 128th Separate Mountain Assault brigade, armed with anti-tank missiles supplied by the Individuals and the British in addition to different superior weapons methods, claimed to have destroyed two Russian T-72 tanks that had strayed too near its positions.

“We’re on our personal land,” Captain Vitaliy Nevinsky, the brigade’s commander, mentioned. “We’re defending ourselves and knocking out this horde, this invasion of our territory.”

Anton Troianovski reported from Hamburg, Germany, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Michael Levenson from New York. Reporting was contributed by Marc Santora from Krakow, Poland, Michael Schwirtz from Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, Tyler Hicks from Kharkiv, Ukraine, Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva, Julian E. Barnes from Washington, Farnaz Fassihi from New York and Sameer Yasir from New Delhi.