Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told CNN on Thursday that he believes Russian troops will "quite soon" aim to capture one-third of the land in Ukraine and that Moscow will use it to strengthen its negotiating hand.

“I see the Russian troops regrouping, reorganizing. I think that they will try to surround the Ukrainian forces quite soon — in the Donbas region in particular. And then having captured one-third of the land in Ukraine, they will want to negotiate from this … very strong position,” the prime minister told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview.