Pelagiya Tikhonova/Moscow News Agency/Handout via Reuters
Moscow says its new mission in the war against Ukraine is to free Russian troops who were captured there as they tried but failed to carry out the Kremlin’s invasion plans. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu kept a straight face as he told the audience of a security conference in Moscow on Tuesday that one of the new “priorities” of the so-called special military operation is the liberation of Russian troops taken captive during the special military operation. “We will continue to take steps to return our soldiers,” Shoigu was quoted as saying by TASS, accusing Kyiv of making it “complicated” for Moscow to free the soldiers it sent to commit war crimes. He also claimed that the war had been successful in “putting an end to the dominance of the collective West in the military sphere.”
