* Forces likely to stay in southern Ukraine- ambassador
* Russia will defeat Ukraine in Donbas - ambassador (Adds Ukrainian position to July 8 story, paragraphs 7,8)
By Jake Cordell
LONDON, July 9 (Reuters) - Russia is unlikely to withdraw from a swathe of land across Ukraine's southern coast and will defeat Ukrainian forces in the whole of the eastern Donbas region, Russia's ambassador to London told Reuters.
Since the Feb. 24 invasion, Russian forces have taken control of a big chunk of territory across Ukraine's southern flank above Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Russia is slowly pushing Ukrainian forces out of two Russian-backed rebel regions of east Ukraine which it has recognised as independent states.
When asked how the conflict might end, Russian Ambassador Andrei Kelin said it was difficult to see Russian and Russian-backed forces withdrawing from the south of Ukraine, and that Ukraine's soldiers would be pushed back from all of Donbas.
"We are going to liberate all of the Donbas," Kelin told Reuters in an interview in his London residence where Winston Churchill used to discuss World War Two strategy with Josef Stalin's ambassador.
"Of course it is difficult to predict the withdrawal of our forces from the southern part of Ukraine because we have already experience that after withdrawal, provocations start and all the people are being shot and all that."
Russia says Ukraine has repeatedly killed civilians in attacks on territory held by Russian backed separatists in Ukraine's Donbas since 2014. Fighting over the frontline in that region caused thousands of casualties on both sides long before Russia's invasion this year.
The ambassador's comments mark one of the most explicit public descriptions of Russia's potential endgame in Ukraine: essentially a forced partition that would leave Ukraine shorn of more than one fifth of its post-Soviet territory.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Ukraine will never accept Russian occupation of its territory and will fight on until the last Russian soldier is pushed out of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government did not immediately comment on the Russian ambassador's remarks.
Sooner or later, Kelin said, Ukraine would have to decide: strike a peace deal with Russia or "continue slipping down this hill" to ruin.
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused the West of decades of aggression towards Moscow and warned that if it wanted to attempt to beat Russia on the battlefield it was welcome to try, but this would bring tragedy for Ukraine.