WARSAW, Poland — Russian forces will attempt to “destroy” a huge component of the Ukrainian military in eastern Ukraine over the coming weeks, according to a Ukrainian official, who celebrated the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv but suggested that Moscow still hopes to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Even the negotiations in Turkey, it’s just ridiculous; they’re not going to bring any peace to Ukraine,” Oleksandr Danylyuk, a security adviser to the central government, told the Washington Examiner. “So, they’re looking for an opportunity to just to win some time, to mobilize their resources, to bring more troops, and at least to isolate the Ukrainian formation in Donbas, destroy that formation, and to use that defeat as a trigger for internal destabilization in the capital of Ukraine, which was actually their original plan.”