Moscow:  As comments from Russia's foreign minister demonstrated the Kremlin's objectives had expanded throughout the five-month war. the Ukrainian armed forces claimed on Thursday that they had killed 111 Russian soldiers in the south and east over the previous day.

Russia's military "tasks" in Ukraine now extend beyond the eastern Donbas region, according to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti on Wednesday. 

Lavrov added that if the West continues to provide Kyiv with long-range weapons like American-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, Moscow's goals will continue to grow (HIMARS).

That implies that the geographical tasks will go beyond the current line, he explained.

The drone strike on a nuclear power plant there, according to the Russian-installed administration in the partially occupied Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia, did not harm the reactor.

The southern region of Kherson, which is under Russian control, also heard multiple explosions overnight and into Thursday, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

The reports could not be independently confirmed by Reuters. The Ukrainian government was silent at the time.

In the midst of what they claimed were largely unsuccessful attempts by Russian ground forces to advance, the Ukrainian military reported intense and occasionally fatal Russian shelling.

Ukrainian forces claimed they killed more than 100 Russian soldiers and destroyed 17 vehicles, some of them armoured, over the previous 24 hours.

The forces claimed in a Facebook post that they didn't observe any indications that Russia was forming special strike groups to advance a new offensive.

The battlefield accounts could not be independently verified by Reuters.

THE UNITED STATES Condemns Territorial expansion

The Russian invasion has killed thousands, displaced millions, and destroyed cities, particularly in Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine's east and southeast. It has also pushed up global energy and food prices, raising fears of famine in poorer countries because Ukraine and Russia are both major grain producers.

According to CIA Director William Burns, the US estimates that Russian casualties in Ukraine have reached around 15,000 killed and possibly 45,000 wounded.

Even in times of peace, Russia considers military deaths to be state secrets, and it has not updated its official casualty figures on a regular basis during the war.

The US, which said on Tuesday that it saw signs that Russia was preparing to formally annex territory it had seized in Ukraine, has promised to oppose annexation.

"Once again, we have stated unequivocally that annexation by force would be a blatant violation of the UN Charter, and we will not allow it to go unchallenged." "We will not let it go unpunished," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday during a regular daily briefing.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and supports Russian-speaking breakaway entities in those provinces, known collectively as the Donbas.

Nearly five months after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Feb. 24 invasion with a denial that Russia intended to occupy its neighbour, Lavrov is the most senior figure to speak openly of Russia's war goals in territorial terms.

Then, Putin declared his intention to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine, which Kyiv and the West dismissed as a pretext for an imperial-style war of expansion.

Lavrov told RIA Novosti that geographical realities had changed since Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met in Turkey in late March but failed to reach an agreement.

"Now the geography is different, it's not just the DPR and LPR, it's also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number of other territories," he said, referring to territories beyond the Donbas that Russian forces have seized entirely or partially.

Intimidation on Energy

Meanwhile, fears that Russian gas supplies sent through Europe's largest pipeline could be cut off by Moscow prompted the European Union to instruct member states to reduce gas consumption by 15% until March as an emergency measure.

"Russia is threatening us. "Russia is using energy as a weapon," EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, calling a complete shutdown of Russian gas flows a "likely scenario" for which "Europe must be prepared."

Putin had previously warned that gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which has been closed for 10 days for maintenance, could be further reduced. The pipeline is scheduled to reopen on Thursday.

Russia, the world's largest gas exporter, has denied using its energy supplies as a tool of coercion, claiming that it has been a reliable energy supplier.

Russia will not supply oil to the world market if a price cap lower than the cost of production is imposed, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday, according to Interfax.

EU diplomats meeting in Brussels agreed on a new round of sanctions against Moscow, including a ban on importing gold from Russia and the freezing of the assets of Russia's largest lender, Sberbank. However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy deemed the sanctions insufficient.

In a late-night video address, Zelenskiy said, "Russia must pay a much higher price for the war to force it to seek peace."

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