Russia signals it only wants to seize part of Ukraine

Russia signaled Friday it may dial back its war aims to focus on eastern Ukraine after failing to break the nation's resistance in a month of fighting and attacks on civilians, including bombing a crowded theatre where officials now say up to 300 people died.

The possible shift came as President Joe Biden, fresh from a series of Western summits in Brussels, visited elite US troops serving with NATO just across the border in Poland.

President Vladimir Putin initially ordered the invasion to destroy Ukraine's military and topple pro-Western President Volodymyr Zelensky, bringing the country under Russia's sway.

However, Sergei Rudskoi, chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of Russia's armed forces, suggested a considerably scaled-back "main goal" of controlling the Donbas, an eastern Ukrainian region already partly held by Russian proxies.

Rudskoi made no reference to widespread signs of setbacks for his troops, claiming instead that he considers the initial phase of the invasion to have been a success.

Biden earlier praised the "incredible" Ukrainian resistance, comparing the conflict to a bigger version of communist China's 1989 crushing of protests in Tiananmen Square.

The US leader announced new measures to help the European Union shed dependence on imported Russian energy -- part of a sea change in the West, which for years has shrunk from direct confrontation with the Kremlin, but now seeks to make Putin a pariah.

And Biden told soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division that the struggle in eastern Europe represents a historic "inflection point."

"Are democracies going to prevail..., or are autocracies going to prevail? And that's really what's at stake," Biden said.

While in Rzeszow, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) from Ukraine, Biden was briefed on the humanitarian situation, with more than 3.7 million refugees fleeing Ukraine, most of them into Poland.