Russia concentrated over 420,000 troops in occupied Ukrainian territories - intelligence

Vadym Skibitskyi, a representative of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said this at the annual meeting of the Yalta European Strategy (YES), Ukrinform reports.

"The Russian Federation has concentrated more than 420,000 military personnel in our temporarily occupied territories and on the Crimean peninsula," Skibitskyi said.

At the same time, he noted that this figure does not take into account the soldiers of the Russian Guard, other agencies, special units, and law enforcement structures, which ensure the occupation "power" in the temporarily occupied territory.

Skibitskyi said that since the beginning of the full-scale aggression, Russia has not achieved its strategic goal of full occupation of Ukrainian territory.

"Then there were other strategic goals. First of all, full occupation of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. And today, Russia conducts the most active combat operations, in fact, in two sectors -- Kupiansk-Lyman and Marinka-Donetsk -- in order to fulfill at least some task and fully reach the administrative borders of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions," Skibitskyi said.