The warnings came as the leader of a separatist region in eastern Ukraine says he wants to hold a referendum on joining Russia. Leonid Pasechnik, leader of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Luhansk, said he could hold a vote “in the near future”, asking voters if they supported the region becoming part of Russia. Russia has been supporting separatist rebels in Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk since an uprising broke out there in 2014, shortly after Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula. And shortly before the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Moscow recognized their independence. Crimean people overwhelmingly voted in favor of secession from Ukraine and accession to Russia, a vote that many in the world refused to recognize. In response, Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, said Moscow was trying to split Ukraine in half. “In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” Budanov said. He predicted that the Ukrainian army would repel Russian forces. “In addition, the season of a full-fledged Ukrainian guerrilla safari will soon begin. “Then there will be a relevant scenario for the Russians, how to survive,” he said. The representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine also rejected the discussions on any referendum in eastern Ukraine. “All fake referendums in the temporarily occupied territories are invalid and will have no legal force,” Oleg Nikolenko told Reuters. On Friday, Russian military leaders said they would focus their military efforts on removing Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region from Ukrainian control, in an apparent change of tactics. In ongoing talks with Ukraine, Moscow has also urged it to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea and the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Pasechnik’s statement could herald a change in Russia’s position. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed the West for a lack of courage and called on fighter jets and tanks to maintain defense in a conflict that has led to a war of attrition. Nadiya Kyrylenko, fleeing the Luhansk region amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reacts to a school gym where she is taking refuge in Uzhgorod, Ukraine. (REUTERS) Mr. Zelensky criticized “Western ping-pong for who and how should hand over jets and other defensive weapons to us,” while Russian missile strikes kill and trap civilians. “I spoke with the defenders of Mariupol today. I am in constant contact with them. “Their determination, their heroism and their stability are astonishing,” Zelensky said in a videotaped speech early Sunday, referring to the besieged southern city that has suffered some of the greatest deprivations and horrors of war. “If only those who think for 31 days how to deliver dozens of jets and tanks had one percent of their courage.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stalled in many areas, faltering in the face of US-backed Ukrainian resistance from weapons and other Western allies. Western military assistance so far does not include fighter jets. A proposal to transfer Polish planes to Ukraine via the US was canceled amid NATO concerns about a conflict with Russia. “So who is responsible for the Euro-Atlantic community? “Is it still Moscow, thanks to its terror tactics?” said Mr. Zelensky. “Our partners must step up their assistance to Ukraine.” The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday that the battlefield in northern Ukraine remains largely static as local counterattacks hamper Russian efforts to reorganize its forces. The Foreign Ministry said Russian troops appeared to be trying to encircle Ukrainian forces directly confronting separatist areas in the east of the country. On Sunday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said he had used air-launched cruise missiles to hit a fuel depot and a defense plant in Lviv. He said another rocket-propelled grenade blast had destroyed a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in Plesetsk, just west of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The strikes came as Biden wrapped up a visit to Poland, where he met with Ukraine’s foreign and defense ministers, visited US troops and saw refugees from the war. Before leaving, he strongly condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying: “For God’s sake, this man can not stay in power.” The White House said it was not seeking an immediate change of government in Moscow. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Sunday that Washington had no strategy for regime change and that Biden simply meant that Putin could not be “authorized to wage war” against Ukraine or anywhere else. A wrecked car appears near a wrecked apartment building in a Kharkiv front-line neighborhood (AFP via Getty Images) Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov said Russia’s future “is not up to Biden to decide.” “This speech – and the passages about Russia – is amazing, to use polite words,” he added. “He does not understand that the world is not limited to the United States and most of Europe.” French President Emmanuel Macron has tried to distance himself from Biden’s comments. “I would not use that kind of wording because I continue to have discussions with President Putin,” he told France 3 television. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned on Sunday that the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol was becoming “the second Aleppo” and that Russia’s “siege war” against the cities would provoke “collective guilt”. “Civilian populations are being slaughtered, annihilated, suffering is horrific,” said one apparently angry Le Drian.
