Ukraine: Russia wants to ‘create North, South Korea’, split nation, says military intelligence chief
- Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukrainian military intelligence, says Luhansk region could soon hold referendum on joining Russia, as in Crimea, seized in 2014
- ‘It is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine’; he also says ‘season of total Ukrainian guerilla safari will soon begin’
Russia wants to split Ukraine into two, as happened with North and South Korea, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief said on Sunday, vowing “total” guerilla warfare to prevent a carve up of the country.
President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the West to give Ukraine tanks, planes and missiles to help fend off the Russian forces, which the Kyiv government said were increasingly targeting fuel and food depots.
Meanwhile, US officials continued efforts to soften comments made by US President Joe Biden on Saturday, who said in a fiery speech in Poland that Russian leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”.
After more than four weeks of conflict, Russia has failed to seize any major Ukrainian city and Moscow signalled on Friday it was scaling back its ambitions to focus on securing the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army for eight years.
A local leader in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in the east of Ukraine said on Sunday the region could soon hold a referendum on joining Russia, just as happened in Crimea after Russia seized the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014.