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Ukraine believes that after failing to control the entire country, Russia is trying to split Ukraine in two to create a region controlled by Moscow.Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to “Establish a dividing line between occupied and unoccupied areas” country, split it in two and create a The situation is similar to that of North and South Korea.
“After the defeat near Kyiv and the failure to overthrow Ukraine’s central government, Putin is already changing his guidelines to focus on the south and east of the country. There is reason to believe he is considering korean stage Ukraine’s intelligence chief said in a statement.
This is not the first time Budanov has predicted a scenario that seems out of reach. The 36-year-old general was named head of the department by President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2020, a decision that was highly criticized in his youth, Us Weekly reported. nationand It was one of the first countries to warn of a possible Russian invasion late last yearbut it doesn’t get much credibility.
Budanovarrive Coming of age after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he belonged to a new generation of Ukrainian defense officials who were closer to NATO officials than their Soviet predecessors and dedicated to ties to U.S. intelligence. weekly.
Now Budanov once again pointed to what Russia might do next.In his opinion Forces “will attempt to unify occupied territories into a single quasi-state entity”, according to his assessment, “will oppose an independent Ukraine”. “We have seen attempts to create parallel authorities in occupied territories,” he added.
Kerillo Budanov.
Minister of Defense of Ukraine
To achieve this, Putin must unite the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, with the territory of Donbass in the east of the country, where the Kremlin has been fomenting pro-Russian separatists for years.
Specifically, Moscow said on Friday that its military aims to, after the first phase of the waris concentrated in the Donbass, and despite the announcement received by the Kyiv government and its allies, doubts and suspicions remain.
However, the latest moves by Russian troops point in this direction, with Moscow already moving parts of its troops eastward from Kharkiv in the north and Mariupol in the south, according to the latest assessment. complete.
In the war section prepared by the British Ministry of Defence based on its intelligence report, it indicated that Russia “appears to be concentrating on encircling Ukrainian forces in direct confrontation with separatist areas in the eastern part of the country”.
“Liberation of the Donbass”
On February 21, Putin recognized the independence of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk republics in the Donbas region. Three days later, he launched his military offensive to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine, now 32 days old, on the grounds that the Ukrainian army is carrying out a “genocide” of the pro-Russian population in the region, which In recent years, it has distributed more than 700,000 Russian passports.
Putin’s declared goal, and one that he may be clearer now, is to “Total liberation” of the Donbasswhere pro-Russian militias and Ukrainian troops have clashed since 2014.
In ongoing ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine, the Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine recognize the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk and that Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula belongs to Russia.
Indeed, Leonid Paschenik, the leader of the self-proclaimed separatist republic of Luhansk, assured this Sunday that Referendum likely in ‘near future’ According to the official TASS agency, on the question of incorporating this pro-Russian territory into Russia.
“I believe that in the near future there will be a referendum on the territory of the republic in which people will exercise their absolute constitutional right to express their opinion on whether they want to join the Russian Federation,” he explained.
Question: Mariupol
In the eyes of Ukrainian intelligence, however, Russia may encounter a stumbling block on a plan it has no hope of: Mariupol.
“But the main problem with implementing the plan is our unshakable Mariupol”adding Budanov to his assessment.
The port city of 500,000 inhabitants is strategically located in Russia: between the annexed Crimea (west) and the Donetsk region (east), would allow Putin to control the entire Ukrainian coastline from the Sea of Azov.
However, the city, which had been besieged by Russia for weeks, resisted the bombing without surrendering, despite the dire situation inside.
The streets of Mariupol have been occupied by battles and battles taking place in the center of the city.Satellite imagery from the area shows extensive damagewhere buildings and shops were destroyed and burned, and the United Nations has warned for weeks that supplies are not arriving.
In fact, the agreed humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of people in besieged cities are limited to private vehicles, as buses are not allowed to pass, and President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly warned that there are no safe humanitarian corridors in Mariupol and that The only way to unlock it is to use tanks and planes.